Hundreds of NIH workers on Monday publicly protested the Trump administration’s cuts to the agency and the consequences for human life, and wrote in sharp words, whose actions are “causing huge reductions in life-saving research.”
“When our leadership takes priority over human security and faithful public resource management, they are forced to speak,” NIH workers said in a letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya on June 9.
“For staff at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we do not agree with policies that undermine NIH missions, waste public resources and harm the health of Americans and people around the world,” they said.
The letter is a special condemnation of the Trump administration’s actions against the NIH, which includes: terminating hundreds of funding for scientific and biomedical research; expelling more than 1,000 employees this year; and transferring final funds to overseas partner agencies, current and former NIH workers said it would harm research on rare cancers and infectious diseases, as well as research aimed at minimizing tobacco use and related chronic diseases, among other areas.
Some NIH workers have signed their names publicly, openly daring to challenge a president who tries to clear the government of employees he believes are unfaithful to him. Others signed anonymously.
“It’s about the harm these policies have on research participants and the U.S. public health and global public health,” Jenna Norton works at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, one of the 27 Institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “There are some study participants who generously decided to donate their time and literal bodies and understand that the service will help improve research on the disease they live with and help the next person who is accompanying the disease.”
“These policies prevent us from fulfilling our commitment to them and keeping them at risk,” she said.
Workers wrote that they hope Bhattacharya welcomes their criticism because his vows prioritize “academic freedom” and respect the views of the NIH leader, based in Bethesda, Maryland. Its author calls it the “Betthesda Manifesto,” a drama about the controversial “Grand Barrington Manifesto” co-authored by Bhattacharya during the Covid-19-19 pandemic.
The Bhattacharya manifesto advocates targeting lockdown measures and proposes that widespread immunity to Covid can be achieved by allowing healthy people to contract the virus and taking protective measures for medically vulnerable people. At the time, Francis Collins, then-NIH, criticized the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), who called Bhattacharya and his co-authors “a fringe epidemiologist,” the email was obtained through an email from the Institute of Economics, which was required by the Freedom of Information Act.
NIH workers in the letter asked Bhattacharya to restore “a grant that was delayed or terminated due to political reasons.” The grants fund a range of projects, including programs addressing Alzheimer’s disease, ways to improve vaccination rates, and efforts to combat health disparities or health misinformation.
“In order to achieve political goals, academic freedom should not be optionally applied, NIH grant authorization for multiple universities terminates, payments freeze payments for ongoing research, and blankets hold rewards regardless of the quality, progress or impact of science,” wrote NIH workers.
The funding termination, they say, is “abandoning years of hard work and millions of dollars”, “risk participants’ health” and “damaging tough public trust against your stated goal of increasing trust in NIH”.
“The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misunderstandings about the policy directions adopted by the NIH in recent months, including the ongoing support of international cooperation by NIH. Nevertheless, despite this, respectful objections are effective in science. We all hope that NIH will succeed.”
NIH’s nearly $48 billion budget makes it the world’s largest public funder for scientific research. Its work has led to countless scientific discoveries that help improve health and save lives around the world. But this is not without controversy, including studying examples of misconduct, nor effective monitoring of grant awards and related research.
Researchers and some states have sued NIH and HHS for grant decisions. NIH official Michelle Bulls’ April 3 testimony said that senior adviser to HHS Rachel Riley, part of the government efficiency division created by executive orders, provided a list of authorizations from NIH officials in the language of termination and termination notices. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, led May.
Norton worked as a federal employee or contractor at NIH for about a decade. She said the current government’s policies are “absolutely immoral and likely illegal”, and have listed a range of developments in recent months. They include termination of the study early and putting the participating patients at risk because they have to stop taking medication abruptly and conduct research that mainly or simply recruit participants from ethnic minorities and ethnicities that have historically been underrepresented in the field of medical research.
“What they are saying is that research specifically targeting black Americans, trying to develop interventions that are effective for the population, or those tailored to the Hispanic Latino population – this kind of research cannot be conducted, which is extremely problematic,” Norton said. “In fact, people who allow whites to over-recruit can move on.”
NIH workers also asked Bhattacharya to resume workers fired at recent massive shootings and allow research to be conducted in collaboration with foreign institutions to “continue to be undamaged.” NIH works with global organizations to address major public health issues including cancer types, tobacco-related diseases and HIV.
In addition to firing probation workers, the NIH also fired 1,200 civil servants, part of the rapid “reduction of force” by federal health agencies. Bhattacharya received a recording with KFF Health News during a May 19 meeting with NIH staff.
He started at the NIH on April 1, on the same day that many NIH workers and other agencies were told they were fired. Other workers have also been fired since Bhattacharya took over – in early May, almost all the national cancer institutes were fired.
The letter is the latest Salvo in the ever-evolving action of scientists and others against the Trump administration. In addition to face-to-face protests outside HHS headquarters and elsewhere, some former employees also organized patients to participate.
Peter Garrett, who leads the transmission work at the National Cancer Institute, created a Patient Action for Advocacy for a nonprofit called Cancer Research. In an interview, he said the goal was to “engage in dialogue, federal funding and scientific decision-making.”
He said his group’s goal is to have patients and their relatives talk about how federal cancer research directly affects them, an effort to put the issue directly to members of Congress. Garrett said he retired from the Cancer Institute very early on due to concerns about political intervention.
Professional officials often work under the leadership of Republican and Democratic presidents. The development of its priorities and tasks is appropriate when the new president, cabinet secretary and other political appointments take over. Often, these changes occur without much protest.
This time, the workers said the unrest and harm to the NIH were so widespread that they felt they had no choice but to protest.
“I’ve never seen anything nearby,” Norton said during his 11 years at NIH.
“Many people have raised these concerns to NIH leadership, but we are still under pressure to force harmful measures,” the workers said in a letter dated June 9.
“It’s not about our work,” said a NIH worker who signed the letter anonymously. “It’s about humanity. It’s about the future.”
Senior correspondent Arthur Allen contributed to the report.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth news on health issues and is one of KFF’s core operational programs, an independent source of health policy research, polls and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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