Washington – W His interrogations confirming To lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya promised his openness to views that could oppose his own. “He opposes,” he said, “he is the essence of science.”
This commitment is subjected to the test.
On Monday, dozens of scientists from the agency sent their leader entitled Trump entitled Bethesda declarationarduous “policies that undermine the mission of Nih, waste public resourcesAnd they hurt the health of Americans and people around the world. “
He says, “We are falling apart.”
In the capital, in which outside people often insist on anonymity to publicly say such things, 92 NIH researchers, programs, heads of branches and scientific review officials place their signatures on the list – and a career on the line. An additional 250 their colleagues at the agency supported the declaration without using their names.
The letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, was also sent Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of the Congress who supervise Nih. A spokesman for the White House, Kush Desai, defended the administration’s approach to federal research and said that President Donald Trump is focusing on restoring the “golden standard” of science, not “ideological activism”.
The letter appeared a day before Bhattacharya to testify among the Senate Commission about the proposed Trump budget, opening him to questions about Broadside of Declaration, and moved Democrats in the home panel to ask the Republican chairman for interrogations in this case.
Confrontation with the “Culture of fear”
The signators publicly approached the “culture of fear and suppressing”. They say that the Trump administration has spread in the Federal Civil Service. “We are forced to speak when our leadership prioritizes political rush over human security and faithful public resources management,” says the declaration.
Bhattacharya responded to the declaration, saying that “he has some fundamental misunderstandings about the directions of policy that Nih has taken in recent months,” such as suggestions that Nih has completed international cooperation.
“Nevertheless, respect for learning is productive,” he said in a statement. “We all want Nih to succeed.”
Name in honor of the Location of the Agency in Maryland, in just months in just months in Maryland, Maryland, described in detail in the scope of the declaration of the Bethesda declaration.
Is going on End Out of 2100 research subsidies worth over $ 12 billion and some human costs, which caused, such as limiting drugs for clinical tests or leaving them with uncomfortable device implants.
In one case, it required retention of tuberculosis resistant tuberculosis at Haiti for many years, ceasing to treat antibiotics in the middle of the patient course.
In many cases, the rehearsals that were mostly completed have become useless without money at the end and analysis of work, says the letter. “The completion of scientific research in the amount of $ 5 million, when it is 80% complete, will not save $ 1 million,” he says, “he wasted $ 4 million.”
The mask falls off
Jenna Norton, who supervises research on health differences at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, has recently appeared on the Sen forum. Angeli Alsobrooks, D-MD., To talk about what is happening in Nih.
At this event she masked to hide her identity. Now the mask is turned off. She was the main organizer of the declaration.
“I want people to know how bad things are in Nih,” said Norton for the Associated Press.
The signatories said they had abandoned their indictment Great Barrington Bhattacharya declaration In 2020, when he was a professor at the University of University School.
His declaration gathered similarly to epidemiologists of an infectious disease and scientists from public health, who did not agree with what they perceived as excessive principles blocking Covid-19 and felt sharply caught up by a larger public health community that pushed these policies, including Nih.
“He is proud of his statement and we are proud of us,” said Sarah Kobrin, head of the Nih National Cancer Institute, who signed the Bethesda declaration.
Cancer tests are moved to the side
As the head of the Department of Research on Health Care Systems, Kobrin provides scientists over researchers throughout the country who have been financed by the Cancer Institute or want to be. The cuts of staff and money moved her work from improving research on caring care to what she considers to minimize its destruction. “So many of them have disappeared – my work,” she said.
21-year-old veteran Nih said she signed a contract because she did not want to be a “collaborator” in political manipulation of biomedical sciences.
Ian Morgan, a sub -charter member of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, also signed a declaration. “We have a saying in basic science,” he said. “You go and become a doctor if you want to treat thousands of patients. You go and become a researcher if you want to save billions of patients.
“We conduct research that they will apply and create medication of the future,” he added. But this will not happen, he said if Trump’s republican administration wins with her firing grant cuts.
Nih employees with whom interviews were interviewed by AP emphasized that they spoke in themselves, not about their institutes or Nih.
Return ranges over the width of Nih
Employees from all 27 institutes and NIH centers supported the declaration. Most of the signed are closely involved in the assessment and supervision of external research subsidies.
The letter claims that “Nih rehearsals are detained regardless of the safety of participants”, and the agency evades obligations to the participants of the rehearsal who “become a personal risk to give an amazing gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would fuel scientific discovery and improve health.”
The Trump administration went to public health research on several fronts, both directly, as part of a wide effort to eradicate diversity, justice and inclusion values ​​in the entire bureaucracy and as part of the pursuit of hunger for some universities federal money.
In the White House, Desai said that the Americans “lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare apparatus and research that was obsessed with Dei and Covid, most of which have been through the Americans for years.”
Blunt
This forced “incorrect ending of the subsidy, payments freeze for ongoing research, and the general has prizes, regardless of the quality, progress or impact of science,” says the declaration.
Some employees of NIH have previously appeared in television protests for air complaints, and many came out of the Bhattacharya town hall with employees. The declaration is the first coherent effort registered throughout the agency in the direction of Nih.
Dissenters resemble Bhattacharya in a letter of his frequently expressed ethics that academic freedom must be lyric in science.
He said with it on the spot statement In April, “scientists from NIH may be sure that they have the opportunity to engage in an open, academic discourse as part of their official duties and their personal ability without the risk of official interference, adverse professional situation or retaliation in the workplace.”
Now it turns out whether this is enough to protect these employees of Nih questioning the administration of Trump and him.
“There is a book that I read to my children, and talks about how you can’t be brave, if you are not afraid,” said Norton, who has three young children. “I’m very afraid that I will do it, but I try to be brave for my children because it will be harder to speak.
“Maybe I expose my children at risk,” she added. “And I do it anyway, because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”
