NIH scientists publish declaration criticizing Trump's deep cuts in
public health research
[June 10, 2025]
By CALVIN WOODWARD and NATHAN ELLGREN
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his confirmation hearings to lead the National
Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views
that might conflict with his own. “Dissent," he said, ”is the very
essence of science.”
That commitment is being put to the test.
On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed
leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies
that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the
health of Americans and people across the globe.”
It says: "We dissent."
In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things
publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and
scientific review officers put their signatures on the letter — and
their careers on the line. An additional 250 of their colleagues across
the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.
The letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. White
House spokesman Kush Desai defended the administration's approach to
federal research and said President Donald Trump is focused on restoring
a “Gold Standard” of science, not “ideological activism.”
The letter came out a day before Bhattacharya is to testify to a Senate
committee about Trump's proposed budget, opening him to questions about
the broadside from declaration signers, and it stirred Democrats on a
House panel to ask the Republican chair for hearings on the matter.
Confronting a ‘culture of fear’
The signers went public in the face of a “culture of fear and
suppression” they say Trump's administration has spread through the
federal civil service. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership
prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful
stewardship of public resources,” the declaration says.
Bhattacharya responded to the declaration by saying it “has some
fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken
in recent months," such as suggestions that NIH has ended international
collaboration.
“Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive,” he said in
a statement. "We all want the NIH to succeed.”
Named for the agency's headquarters location in Maryland, the Bethesda
Declaration details upheaval in the world’s premier public health
research institution over the course of mere months.
It addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more
than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as
cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or
leaving them with unmonitored device implants.
In one case, an NIH-supported study of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis
in Haiti had to be stopped, ceasing antibiotic treatment mid-course for
patients.
In a number of cases, trials that were mostly completed were rendered
useless without the money to finish and analyze the work, the letter
says. “Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does
not save $1 million,” it says, “it wastes $4 million.”
The mask comes off
Jenna Norton, who oversees health disparity research at the agency's
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases,
recently appeared at a forum by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., to talk
about what's happening at the NIH.
At the event, she masked to conceal her identity. Now the mask is off.
She was a lead organizer of the declaration.
“I want people to know how bad things are at NIH," Norton told The
Associated Press.
The signers said they modeled their indictment after Bhattacharya’s
Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, when he was a professor at
Stanford University Medical School.
His declaration drew together likeminded infectious disease
epidemiologists and public health scientists who dissented from what
they saw as excessive COVID-19 lockdown policies and felt ostracized by
the larger public health community that pushed those policies, including
the NIH.
“He is proud of his statement, and we are proud of ours," said Sarah
Kobrin, a branch chief at the NIH's National Cancer Institute who signed
the Bethesda Declaration.
[to top of second column]
|
Jenna Norton ,who works as a researcher at the NIH, poses for a
photograph during an interview with the Associated Press in
Bethesda, Md., Friday, June 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
 Cancer research is sidelined
As chief of the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch,
Kobrin provides scientific oversight of researchers across the
country who've been funded by the cancer institute or want to be.
Cuts in personnel and money have shifted her work from improving
cancer care research to what she sees as minimizing its destruction.
"So much of it is gone — my work,” she said.
The 21-year NIH veteran said she signed because she didn't want to
be "a collaborator” in the political manipulation of biomedical
science.
Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow with the National Institute of
General Medical Sciences, also signed the declaration. “We have a
saying in basic science,” he said. “You go and become a physician if
you want to treat thousands of patients. You go and become a
researcher if you want to save billions of patients.
“We are doing the research that is going to go and create the cures
of the future,” he added. But that won’t happen, he said, if Trump's
Republican administration prevails with its searing grant cuts.
The NIH employees interviewed by the AP emphasized they were
speaking for themselves and not for their institutes nor the NIH.
Dissenters range across the breadth of NIH
Employees from all 27 NIH institutes and centers gave their support
to the declaration. Most who signed are intimately involved with
evaluating and overseeing extramural research grants.
The letter asserts “NIH trials are being halted without regard to
participant safety” and the agency is shirking commitments to trial
participants who “braved personal risk to give the incredible gift
of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would
fuel scientific discovery and improve health.”
The Trump administration has gone at public health research on
several fronts, both directly, as part of its broad effort to root
out diversity, equity and inclusion values throughout the
bureaucracy, and as part of its drive to starve some universities of
federal money.
At the White House, Desai said Americans “have lost confidence in
our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that
has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of
Americans moved on from years ago.”
A blunt ax swings
This has forced “indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes
for ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the
quality, progress, or impact of the science,” the declaration says.
Some NIH employees have previously come forward in televised
protests to air grievances, and many walked out of Bhattacharya's
town hall with staff. The declaration is the first cohesive effort
to register agency-wide dismay with the NIH's direction.
The dissenters remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his oft-stated
ethic that academic freedom must be a lynchpin in science.
With that in place, he said in a statement in April, “NIH scientists
can be certain they are afforded the ability to engage in open,
academic discourse as part of their official duties and in their
personal capacities without risk of official interference,
professional disadvantage or workplace retaliation."
Now it will be seen whether that's enough to protect those NIH
employees challenging the Trump administration and him.
“There's a book I read to my kids, and it talks about how you can't
be brave if you're not scared,” said Norton, who has three young
children. "I am so scared about doing this, but I am trying to be
brave for my kids because it's only going to get harder to speak up.
“Maybe I'm putting my kids at risk by doing this," she added. "And
I'm doing it anyway because I couldn't live with myself otherwise.”
___
Associated Press Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this
report.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
