Changes in the National Institutes of Health gives political appointed a greater authority to finance or prevent research
The Trump administration has made clear that the political appoinals, instead of scientists, will ultimately decide who gets money from the largest salt of biomedical research in the world – the national health institutes of the federal government.
in Executive order on August 7President Donald Trump has announced that political officers will have the power to cancel any federal grant, including scientific work, does not comply with the agency’s priorities.
The Director of the National Health Institutes Jay Bahtashariya strengthened the message in August 15, the internal note Saying that political priorities may go beyond the registration system provided by external experts appointed in hundreds of audit panels.
“While the result and criticism that the application receives in the vision of the peer are important factors in determining the scientific merit of the proposal,” his notes have mentioned, the institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health should not rely on the classifications of scientific merit “in developing final wage plans.”
Like ongoing conflicts in the centers of control and prevention of diseases and the Federal Reserve, the national health institutes of KFFITH News told the disruption of the corporate review process represents an attack on the agency’s experience that the country relied for for decades.
Although the priorities of the agency’s senior employees have always affected some of the financing of the National Institutes of Health, these people have always been professional scientists in the past. By reducing the peer review process, the National Institutes of Health can allow political appointed politicians who are now occupying main positions to stop the grants that are usually funded, and to finance the grants they prefer and which does not necessarily meet strict scientific standards, and he also told dozens of ex -officials former and former Nih Health News.
Jenna Norton, the program official at the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive Diseases and kidney, said that the guidelines of Hacharia “open the door for politicizing the research of the National Institutes of Health.”
She said: “Reviewing the peers is essential and makes sure that we are doing the best science.” “If you are going to ignore it, the political appointed gets the final invitation.”
A spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Health, Amanda Fine, said that the vision of the pendant will remain the cornerstone of the decisions to finance the National Institutes of Health, but funding will become less dependent on the ratio of proposals for auditors.
She said that this “will guarantee” consistent, transparent and strategic financing decisions that are in line with the agency’s mission, the increase in the impact of public health, and hosts of host taxpayers.
Scholarships for scientists at universities and other research centers constitute about 80 % of the budget of the National Institutes of Health of $ 48 billion, with the funding of the rest of the internal research of the National Institutes of Health. Since 1946, the National Institutes of Health have cleared the funds that depend mainly on the advantages set by the scientific review process that classifies each proposal based on innovation, importance and feasibility.
The process of reviewing the peer, in which the proposals are stolen above a certain percentage, were always receiving its critics. Carrie Wolinitz, Chief of Staff of the National Institutes of former Health, said that many Nobel Prize speech described the failure of the auditors to learn about the work that will end up with path discoveries.
Fine said that about half of the 27th National Health Center centers and institutes provide a deadline to raise or drop grants on the priority list due to factors such as research goals at the institute level. But these exceptions apply to less than 5 % of grants, according to Richard Nakamura, who led the Scientific Review Center for Scientific Review from 2011 to 2018.
Khalaf Nakamura, Noni Burns, retired last week after overseeing the changes aimed at reducing the repeated goal of the corporate review: multiple grants to scientists in a good position of higher universities.
Harold Pharmos, who led the National Information Institutes during the reign of President Bill Clinton, and the head of the National Cancer Institute during the era of Barack Obama, who led the national institutes of the National Institutes of the Main Institute of the National Cancer Institute during the era of Barack Obama, said that the Batuharia document “itself is not very annoying in light of the usual practice.” “What is annoying is what might mean in the context of the current administration.”
The expansion of the political power of the Trump administration comes in the national health institutes because it strangled the release of thousands of grants with sometimes mysterious political statements and new layers of bureaucracy, including the requirements that the White House and Director of the National Institutes of Health takes over. Wipe all the new financing Opportunities.
Among the new political appointed during the Bahatshariya era, the Chief of Staff Cranston, a former assistant to the conservative MP Thomas Massi (R-Ky), and former government efficiency director James McLeri, Deputy Caraneston. A senior operational employee has been created and fill Erik ShenabelAnd one of the political appointed – since its launch – which was previously responsible for developing business for a company that sold fitness programs.
Meanwhile, Bhattacharlya, Matthew Mimoli, the world of infectious diseases that appeared as a severe critic of the Covid-19 vaccine. Ministry of Health and Human Services The vaccine experts surprised In May, when Mimoli and her colleagues were granted a $ 500 million grant to develop influenza vaccine using old technology, with no explanation other than a full press statement.
Silvia Zhou, a program employee at the National Cancer Institute, said the mood of the agency is satisfactory. While a minority of workers speaks to protest through the documents Such as “Betisda advertisement“Others maintain their heads and closed their mouths.
Program officers say most of the grants must be subject to new levels of review by the senior employees of the National Institutes of Health and the White House. Employees are given all the language requests-such as “diversity” or “climate change”-which may lead to scrutiny by the highest, according to four programs officers, two of them agreed to KFF Health News not to name because they fear revenge.
Bhahatchariya says that the program officers are compensating Lists of banned words“This is true, we did not get a list of it saying:” Do not use these words. “But we note that when the” health rights grant “grant is terminated,” Norton said.
“We are reviewing them and examining them on all these words as we are supposed to do – but we do,” said the official of the program, which was at the National Health Institutes for a period of six years. The officer said: “After we agreed to them, they go to the grant management office and sit there. Then they send them and say,” What about this word? “.
The officer cited a recent proposal that includes the hottest effects of the weather on kidney disease. The officer said it contains the phrase “climate change” as basic information, but “they made them remove it.” “It is a level of tampering, but I wanted to avoid more delay.”
Zhou said that the process of reviewing the peers itself was “began to collapse” because the very recorded grants were not funded for sometimes mysterious reasons.
National Institutes of Health choose hundreds of external scientists with deep experience to work in audit panels. While he was examined to avoid conflicts of interests, many auditors themselves are benefiting from the granting of national health institutes. Molly Manier, the scientist at the Scientific Review Center, said they accept the salaries of about 200 dollars for 100 hours of work as a kind of social contract with the National Institutes of Health.
“We find that people are more vulnerable to the decline in work in the audit panels because they give them freezing, or out of protest against what is happening in the national health institutes.”
Another review officer describing the University of Brown described a request to work in a committee recently: “They usually said they would do so, but they lost three grants and need to know how to keep their laboratory.”
Maneier said that while granting crawling through the regime, “The auditors began to feel that they were not suffering from anything.” “If the government cancels you without a good reason, you cannot expect a goodwill effort anymore.”
“Death has been done through a thousand paper cuts, anything they can do for payments, to pressure decisions, to take control of grant decisions from job scientists,” said Elizabeth Jenoxy, a 22 -year -old National Institutes Program Officer in April.
The spokesman for the National Health Institutes of Health said that the agency “has no evidence that the recruitment of peer auditors has become more difficult than it was in the past.”
The administration’s doubts about the vision of the peers feed on the doubts that scientists who are already have already have already due to what they saw as an irrational wicked and other issues – including the Memoli vaccine award.
Although the internal research of the National Institutes of Health is not subject to the same review process as external grants, the Memoli grant left officials. One of the experienced auditors said: “I am not aware of a process that gives $ 500 million to a project using old technology to develop vaccines,” said an experienced auditor.
Trump’s CEO says that the grant review “undermines American taxpayers’ interests, and left many unprofible good proposals while” supports a lot of research that is not focused on marginal social benefit. “
“The opposite is true,” said the experienced references. “We make sure that taxpayers’ money goes to the most high -impact research.”
“Allow” is a word that the Trump administration often uses to explain the reason for the official’s launch or refusal to search. Chu finds her horrific.
She said: “The Chinese Communists are called” coordination “, and now her colleagues are routinely talking about” clean “grants because they” passed through. “
“We say this in simple English,” she said. “Not the Russian, not the Chinese Beijing.”
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