Two new lawsuits were filed against the National Institutes of Health, the NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Department of Health and Human Services, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the cancellation of NIH research grants in the past month. More than 900 grants have been terminated so far. The newest lawsuit is being filed by 16 state attorneys general. The other suit, filed by NIH-funded researchers and other scientists, argues that the NIH and HHS failed to follow procedure when canceling research grants and that the grants were canceled for arbitrary and capricious reasons. Termination letters sent to scientists alleged that their research “no longer [effectuated] agency priorities.”
MAX KOZLOV; maxdkozlov@gmail.com
Kozlov is a science journalist at Nature.
Kozlov told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “These two cases will likely be consolidated, as they address the same topic in the same court district with the same judge, with very relevant and similar claims that easily show harm to these sets of plaintiffs. This is a large-scale termination of grants at the NIH that is quite unprecedented.
“Termination of a grant by the NIH is extremely rare. It usually only happens if there has been misconduct or researchers are not making the progress that they said they would. Even in those circumstances, the agency would [normally] suspend the grant or request some sort of remedial action before getting to the point of termination. To see large-scale, keyword searches for grant terminations is beyond unprecedented. By some estimates, all work on trans health care is gone. That is precisely what these lawsuits are challenging: that the terminations were decided in a capricious and arbitrary way that is counter to the agency’s mission. They are also arguing that the terminations usurp Congress’s authority in allocating money to the agency. Congress has given the NIH its budget, and by terminating grants, that money won’t be spent.
“These terminations have a disproportionate effect on early career scientists –– because the grants that have been canceled are disproportionately training grants, which equip researchers with the tools and skills to go about their job and become fully-fledged researchers in the field. This administration doesn’t want to fund them and doesn’t want their research to happen. They’re doing keyword searches: anything that receives federal money with the words ‘gender,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ ‘inclusion,’ they want to stop. They are trying to control the narrative and what work gets done.
“In general, the public isn’t familiar with how important the NIH are. They are by far the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. There is no good replacement for the money that’s being cut off. They are wiping out entire fields of research and researchers are now scrambling to make ends meet. Institutions don’t want researchers to work on these projects after these grants are terminated, because then the institution is on the hook for it. Many researchers with ‘soft money’ positions also don’t receive an institutional salary.
“Why would these researchers stay here, when they can go to other countries that are more willing to fund research? According to an informal Nature poll, 75 percent of respondents were considering leaving the country. We will feel the downstream effects [of these terminations] for a long time, even if things magically change tomorrow… Even if the plaintiffs in these cases are totally successful in getting all grants reinstated, the damage is still being done in terms of attacks on higher education and scientific research on multiple fronts. This isn’t the only front from which the administration is dismantling science.”