We are not aloof: NIH workers protest Trump policies that harm Americans' health.

We are not aloof: NIH workers protest Trump policies that harm Americans' health.

Hundreds of workers at the National Institutes of Health openly protested the Trump administration's cuts to the agency and the consequences on human lives on Monday, writing in a strongly worded letter that their actions are causing a "dramatic reduction in life-saving research."

In a June 9 letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, NIH workers said they were "compelled to speak out when our leadership prioritizes political dynamics over human security and the faithful stewardship of public resources."

“For National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff, we are committed to administrative policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people around the world,” they said.

The letter is an extraordinary recounting of the Trump administration's actions against the NIH, including: ending hundreds of grants supporting scientific and biomedical research; laid off more than 1,000 employees this year; And a move to billions in funding to partner institutions overseas, a move that current and former NIH workers say will harm research on rare cancers and infectious diseases, as well as research aimed at minimizing tobacco use and associated chronic diseases.

Some NIH workers signed their names publicly, daring to openly question a president who has sought to purge the government of employees he sees as disloyal to him. Others signed anonymously.

KFF Health News reached out to officials from the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, for comment.

“It's about the harm that these guidelines have on research participants and American public health and global public health,” said Jenna Norton, who works at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, one of NIH's 27 institutes. “There are research participants who generously choose to donate their time and their literal body parts with the understanding that this service will help advance research into diseases they live with and help the next person who will experience that disease.”

“These policies prevent us from enacting the promise we made to them and the commitment they made, putting them at risk,” she said.

The workers wrote that they hope Bhattacharya welcomes their criticism, which respects his vows to prioritize "academic freedom" and respect dissenting views as leader of the NIH, which is based in Bethesda, Maryland. Its authors called it the “Bethesda Declaration,” a play on the controversial “Great Barrington Declaration” that Bhattacharya helped author during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Bhattacharya's statement campaigned against lockdown measures and suggested that widespread immunity to Covid could be achieved by allowing healthy people to become infected with the virus and introducing protective measures only for the medically vulnerable. It was criticized at the time by Francis Collins, then director of the NIH, who called Bhattacharya and his co-authors "fringe epidemiologists," according to a request from the American Institute for Economic Research.

In their letter, NIH workers demanded that Bhattacharya restore grants that were "delayed or canceled for political reasons." These grants funded a range of projects, including those addressing Alzheimer's disease, ways to increase vaccination rates, and efforts to combat health disparities or health misinformation.

"Academic freedom should not be applied selectively based on political ideology. To achieve political goals, NIH has several universities with indiscriminate grant devices, payment freezes for ongoing research, and caps on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science," the NIH workers wrote.

The funding terminations, they said, "throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars," "risk participant health," and "harm the trust of the hard-earned public, contrary to your stated goal of improving trust in NIH."

The NIH's nearly $48 billion budget makes it the world's largest public funder of scientific research. His work has led to countless scientific discoveries that have helped improve health and save lives around the globe. However, it was not without controversy, including cases of research misconduct and failure to effectively monitor grant awards and related research.

Researchers and some states have sued NIH and HHS over the grant cuts. A deposition from NIH official Michelle Bulls on April 3 said Rachel Riley, a senior adviser at HHS, which is part of the government's efficiency program created by executive order, presented lists of grants to terminate and language for termination notices to NIH officials. Elon Musk, the world's richest person, ran Doge until May.

Norton has worked at the NIH as a federal employee or contractor for about a decade. She said the current administration's policies are "definitely unethical and very likely illegal," listing a number of developments in recent months. These include ending trials early and putting participating patients at risk because they had to abruptly stop taking medications and begin research that would predominantly or exclusively recruit participants from minority races and ethnicities that have historically been underrepresented in medical research.

"They're saying that studies that are conducted exclusively on Black Americans to develop interventions that work for that population, or interventions that are culturally tailored to Hispanic Latino populations—that this type of research is not problematic," Norton said. “And in fact, studies show that over-recruitment of whites was allowed to move forward.”

The NIH workers also demanded that Bhattacharya reinstate workers turned away in the recent mass shooting and allow research to "continue without interruption" in collaboration with institutions abroad. The NIH works with organizations around the world to combat important public health problems, including cancers, tobacco-related diseases and HIV.

In addition to firing parolees, NIH laid off 1,200 officials as part of a rapid “downsizing” of federal health agencies. During a May 19 town hall meeting with NIH staff, a recording of which was obtained by KFF Health News, Bhattacharya said that the decisions on RIFs "happened before I got here. I actually have no transparency on how those decisions were made."

He started at NIH on April 1, the day many workers at NIH and other agencies were told they were being laid off. Other workers have been laid off since Bhattacharya took the helm — nearly all communications staff at the National Cancer Institute were laid off in early May, three former employees told KFF Health News.

The letter is the latest salvo in a growing movement by scientists and others against the Trump administration's actions. In addition to in-person protests outside HHS headquarters and elsewhere, some former employees are organizing patients to get involved.

Peter Garrett, who led the National Cancer Institute's communications efforts, has created a nonprofit cancer research advocacy organization. The goal is to bring patients “into the conversation and federal funding and policymakers,” he said in an interview.

His group aims to get patients and their relatives to talk about how federal cancer research directly impacts them, he said — a "guerrilla lobbying" effort to put the issue right in front of members of Congress. Garrett said he withdrew from the Cancer Institute early because of concerns about political interference.

Career civil servants routinely serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents. It is a haven for the course for their priorities and responsibilities to evolve as a new president, Cabinet secretaries and other political appointees take over. Usually these changes occur without much protest.

This time, workers said the upheaval and damage done to the NIH was so extensive that they felt they had no choice but to protest.

In 11 years at NIH, Norton said, "I've never seen anything that comes close."

In the June 9 letter, the workers said, "Many have raised these concerns for NIH leadership, yet we remain pressured to take harmful actions."

“This is not about our jobs,” said an NIH worker who signed the letter anonymously. "It's about humanity. It's about the future."

Sources: