The planned NIH cuts threaten the health of the Americans, the senators accused a tense audience

The planned NIH cuts threaten the health of the Americans, the senators accused a tense audience

By Max Kozlov & Nature Magazine

The American senators have toasted the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jayanta Bhattacharya, during an audience on June 10 on the way in which her support for scientific squares with unprecedented funding and research layoffs this year, as well as enormous reductions that were proposed for his budget in 2026.

What would normally be a routine audience on public spending was anything but: hundreds of scientists and research defenders on Alzheimer’s disease were packed in a cramped room on Capitol Hill to denounce the American president Donald Trump, who calls 8.

Such a cup “would stop the critical research of Alzheimer’s on its tracks,” said Tonya Maurer, defender of the Alzheimer’s association, a non -profit group based in Chicago, Illinois, said Nature at the hearing. “We worked too hard to see this happen.”

On the support of scientific journalism

If you appreciate this article, plan to support our award -winning journalism by subscription. By buying a subscription, you help to ensure the future of striking stories about discoveries and ideas that shape our world today.

Bhattacharya defended his leadership at the agency – the largest public funder for biomedical research in the world – noting that there is a “need for reform to the NIH” and that to restore its reputation, the NIH “cannot return to business as usual”. (The NIH was accused by Trump and its republican allies to finance science and research “awake” on the coronavirus which, according to them, could have triggered the pandemic of COVID-19.) To help repair the agency, Bhattacharya told the senerators that he wanted to focus on increasing reproducibility in biomedical research, Find an answer to September.

Letters

The hearing occurs the day when more than 300 NIH staff have sent Bhattacharya to a fiery letter denouncing the mass dismissal of jobs to the agency and its cancellation of thousands of research projects on a growing list of subjects which, according to the Trump team, are `politicized ”, including those who investigate the biology of COVID-19, (LGBT +) and the reasons for people for people for healthy people.

“We are obliged to express themselves when our leadership favors political momentum on human security and the faithful management of public resources,” wrote staff.

They appointed their letter the “Bethesda declaration”, after the Maryland community and the suburbs of Washington DC where most of the NIHs are located. The title also alludes to the “ Great Barrington Declaration ”, an open letter that Bhattacharya co-signed in October 2020 which pleaded against the COVVI-19 locking, with the exception of the most vulnerable citizens, allowing rather that children and others are infected so that “herd immunity” can be reached and Horbar; A proposal that many scientists and NIH officials called dangerous at the time.

During the hearing, Patty Murray, a democratic senator of Washington, implored Bhattacharya to “take into account their warning” and said that it expects that “none of them will realize for raising these concerns”.

Bhattacharya did not respond to this comment at the hearing, but said in a statement on June 9 that Bethesda’s declaration “had false fundamental ideas on the political directives that the NIH has taken in recent months”, but that “the respectful dissent of science is productive”.

Gavin Yamey, World Health Researcher at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who signed the last declaration, said: “He can speak of freedom, but his own staff denounces his censorship. How he actually acts and what he says is not the same. “

Appropriate

Several senators, including Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, questioned who was in charge of the NIH, since the Ministry of Elon Musk government efficiency has ordered agency employees to reduce hundreds of specific subsidies.

“Priority changes, the distance from politicized science, I made these decisions,” replied Bhattacharya. The mass endings of prices in institutions such as Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “it’s joint with the administration,” he said. (The Trump administration allegedly allegedly allegedly Harvard have authorized discrimination, including anti -Semitism, on their campuses, and have reduced or frozen the funding of research accordingly.)

The 40% drastic reduction in the NIH budget proposed for the 2026 financial year has not yet been established: the US Congress has the ultimate word on government spending, and during the first presidency of Trump, when it proposed a huge reduction in the biomedical agency in 2017, it rather approved a slight increase. However, the composition of the body has changed considerably since then – much more of its members are now faithful to Trump.

The comments made during the hearing by the senators were not entirely divided online parties. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine who voted to confirm both Bhattacharya and RFK JR, said that she had been disturbed by the budgetary proposal.

“This would cancel the years of investment in Congress in NIH,” she said.

This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication June 11, 2025.