Washington (AP) – Its confirmation hearings To direct the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya promised its opening to opinions that could come into conflict with his. “Dissent,” he said, “is the very essence of science.”
This commitment is put to the test.
Monday, dozens of scientists from the agency sent their Trump chief a letter entitled Bethesda’s declarationA frontal challenge to “politicians who undermine the NIH mission, waste public resourcesAnd harm the health of Americans and people around the world. »»
He says, “We dissiminate.”
In a capital where initiates often insist on the anonymity of publicly saying such things, more than 90 NIH researchers, directors of programs, branches and scientific examination directors have put their signatures on the letter – and their careers at stake.
Confront a “culture of fear”
They became public in the face of a “culture of fear and abolition” that they say that the administration of President Donald Trump has spread to the Federal Public Service. “We are obliged to express themselves when our leadership gives priority to the political momentum on human security and the faithful stewardship of public resources,” said the declaration.
Appointed through the agency’s registered office in Maryland, Bethesda’s Declaration details information on the first global public health research institution in a few months.
He addresses The abrupt end Out of 2,100 research subsidies valued at more than $ 12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as reducing medication schemes in clinical trials or leaving them not monitored device implants.
In a case, a study supported by NIH on multi-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti had to be stopped, supposed to antibiotic treatment halfway up for patients.
In a number of cases, the trials that have been mainly completed were rendered unnecessary without money to finish and analyze the work, the letter said. “Ending a research study of $ 5 million when it is full of 80% does not save $ 1 million,” he said, “he wasted $ 4 million.”
The mask stands out
The four -page letter, addressed to Bhattacharya but also sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And the members of the congress who oversee the NIH were approved by 250 anonymous employees of the agency in addition to the 92 who signed.
Jenna Norton, who oversees research on health disparities at the National Diabetes Institute and Digestive and Renal Diseases of the Agency, recently participated in a forum of Senator Angela Alsobrooks, D-MD., To talk about what’s going on in NIH.
During the event, she masked to hide her identity. Now the mask is off. She was a principal organizer of the declaration.
“I want people to know how bad things are in NIH,” Norton told the Associated Press.
The signatories said that they had modeled their indictment after Bhattacharya Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020, when he was a professor at the Stanford University Medical School.
His statement brought together epidemiologists of infectious diseases with similar views and public health scientists who dissident from what they considered excessive COVVI-19 locking policies and felt ostracized by the largest public health community that pushed these policies, including NIH.
“He is proud of his declaration and we are proud of ours,” said Sarah Kobrin, branch manager of the National Cancer Institute of the NIH who signed Bethesda’s declaration.
Cancer research is away
As head of health systems and the interventions research branch, Kobrin provides scientific supervision of researchers across the country that have been funded by Cancer Institute or wish. But sudden cuts in staff and money have passed her work from improving research on cancer care that she considers her destruction. “Much of this has disappeared-my work,” she said.
The 21 -year -old NIH veteran said she had signed because “I don’t want to be a collaborator” in the political manipulation of biomedical science.
Ian Morgan, postdoctoral scholarship holder of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, also signed the declaration. “We have a saying in fundamental science,” he said. “You will become a doctor if you want to treat thousands of patients. You will become a researcher if you want to save billions of patients.
“We are doing the research that will create the remedies of the future,” he added. But that will not happen, he said, if Trump’s republican administration prevails with his burning subsidies.
The NIH employees interviewed by the AP stressed that they spoke for themselves and not for their institutes or the NIH.
Dissidents go on the extent of NIH
Employees of the 27 NIH Institutes and Centers supported the declaration. Most of the who have signed are intimately involved in the evaluation and supervision of extramural research grants.
The letter claims that “NIH tests are interrupted without regard to the safety of participants” and that the agency is unchecking commitments to participants in the trial which “branded the personal risk of giving the incredible gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would feed scientific discovery and improve health”.
The Trump administration went to research in public health on several fronts, both directly, as part of its wide effort to eliminate Diversity, equity and inclusion values throughout the bureaucracy, and in the context of its desire for hunger of certain universities of federal money.
A blunt ax Balance
This forced “the endings of blind subsidies, the payment gels for current research and the coverage retains rewards, regardless of the quality, progress or impact of science”, indicates the declaration.
Some NIH employees have already come up during television demonstrations against the aerial grievances, and many left the town hall of Bhattacharya with the staff. The declaration is the first coherent effort to record the agency’s scale with the Directorate of the NIH.
A group of signals has become the place to sort the participants through the NIH on Reddit, to discern the rumor of reality and to offer mutual support. The declaration took shape in this group and, as a word, neighbor to the neighbor in the NIH offices.
The dissidents remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his ethics often indicated that academic freedom must be a Lynchpin in science.
With that in place, he said in a declaration In April, “NIH scientists can be sure that they have the possibility of engaging in an open academic discourse in the context of their official functions and their personal capacities without risk of official interference, professional disadvantage or reprisals in the workplace”.
Now we will see if that is enough to protect these employees from the NIH contesting the Trump administration and him.
“There is a book that I read to my children, and that explains how you cannot be courageous if you are not frightened,” said Norton, who has three young children. “I’m so afraid of doing this, but I try to be courageous for my children because it will only become more difficult to speak.
“Maybe I put my children in danger by doing this,” she added. “And I do it anyway because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”
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Associated Press’s medical writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.
