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More than 300 scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) signed one open letter On Monday morning, the director Dr. Jay Bhattcharya the Trump administration because of the last steps.
The letter, including 92 signed names and 250 anonymous, but verified signatories, shares concerns that research is politicized, global cooperation is interrupted and that budget and employee cuts have hindered the ability of NIH to carry out important research.
“[W]It is a opinion -on guidelines that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources and damage the health of Americans and people around the world, “in the letter:” We are forced to express ourselves when our leadership prioritizes the political dynamics of human security and faithful responsibility for public resources. “
Some of the NIH scientists who signed the letter spoke in their personal property and not on behalf of the agency, ABC News said that they and their colleagues tried to consider the concerns -and repeated -but without success.
You said there is now an urgency to comment, especially since Bhattacharya is Set to testify On Tuesday at a hearing before the Senate’s appropriation committee for the proposed NIH budget for the upcoming financial year.
“There is a great risk to comment, and I am still afraid even after it has already happened, even after it has already been said,” Jenna Norton, a program officer at the NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digendive and kidney diseases and one of the leading organizers of the letter, told ABC News. “I think many people focus on the risk of commenting, but we also have to think about the risk of not speaking.”
Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jayanta Bhattcharya, on May 22, 2025, organizes a copy of a Maha health report during a Maha Commission (Make America Healthy) in the White House.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
The letter with the designation of the Bethesda declaration – Nih has its headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland – is modeled Great Barrington explanationof which Bhattacharya was a co-author.
The Great Barrington Declaration was published in October 2020 and named after the city of Massachusetts, in which they could be avoided, and a new plan for dealing with pandemic by protecting the most endangered people, but most to resume normal activities and naturally protect the herd amity.
At that time it was criticized by experts for public health professions, including Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, General Director of the World Health Organization. said It is simply unethical, a virus “We don’t understand to run completely to run freely.” While Certificate before the congress In March 2023, Bhattcharya said that the explanation was voted on for the “suppression” of federal health officers.
“After the explanation of the Great Barrington, we modeled the explanation of Bethesda … because we wanted him to see himself in our campaign,” said Norton. “He spoke a lot about his commitment to academic freedom and dissent. If Jay Bhattcharya is the person he claims very publicly, and if he is actually responsible at NIH, we hope that this will move him to act. And if he is not the person he says, or he is not responsible for Nih, I think the public and the congress is aware of it.”
The letter asked Bhattacharya to reverse grants that were delayed or terminated for “political reasons” and to allow work with foreign employees.
The signatories also asked Bhattcharya to reverse a guideline that limits the indirect costs for research with 15% and reinserted essential employees that were released from NIH.
“The explanation of Bethesda has some fundamental misunderstandings about the political directions that the NIH has taken over in recent months, including the continued support of the NIH for international cooperation,” said Bhattacharya in an ABC News explanation. “Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to be successful.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health & Human Services announced ABC News that the “Legitimate” agency had not stopped working with international partners. In addition, the spokesman said that other donors such as the Gates Foundation limit indirect costs to 15% and that every termination is checked.
Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral researcher at the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences, whose work focused on antimicrobial resistance, told ABC News that the changes in the agency were a “traumatic experience”.
He said when the Trump government came into office, he was prevented from researching in his laboratory because he could not buy any essential items and was not allowed to visit a conference in February to speak to potential employees. He also saw how many of his employees were accidentally terminated and then hired again.
“It is just really traumatic and really annoying for researchers at the NIH,” said Morgan, who signed the letter. “We do not go into it because we try to make money, not because of our own benefits. We go into it because we want to serve the public. We want life -saving research.”
Sarah Kobrin, a branch at the NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI), who also signed the letter, she said before the new administration that she worked with researchers who had either received or already had money from NCI and who had already applied for to support NCI.
With more than 2,100 research grants of a total of 9.5 billion US dollars, which were terminated at NIH – according to the letter – she said that some of her daily tasks have changed.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Gateway Center can be seen in the rain in Bethesda, Md., June 8, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
“I spend my time talking to people who have just learned that their projects were shortened and have false, pseudo -scientific reasons that their work is not valuable for public health for America, and it is simply not true,” Kobrin told ABC News.
The NIH researchers informed ABC News that there is a public letter that people can do sign to express your support Or you can contact your congress representatives to express your concerns.
Morgan, the antimicrobial researcher, said he did not want the letter to be only about detailing all changes that have taken place at NIH since taking office.
“We get up and show that not everything is lost, and it has certainly caused irreparable damage, but we still have time to correct the ship and take it in the right direction,” he said. “I have to leave this message of hope to people, because otherwise they feel that there is nothing they can do and that we are powerless, but we are all powerful.”
The Trump administration did not immediately answer a comment on the request from ABC News.