JOIN WITH US IN SUPPORTING NIH STAFF

The Bethesda Declaration: A Call for NIH and HHS Leadership to Deliver on Promises of Academic Freedom and Scientific Excellence 

Dear Dr. Bhattacharya,

For staff across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe. Keeping NIH at the forefront of biomedical research requires our stalwart commitment to continuous improvement. But the life-and-death nature of our work demands that changes be thoughtful and vetted. We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.

Many have raised these concerns to NIH leadership, yet we remain pressured to implement harmful measures. Today, we come directly to you. We include Secretary Kennedy and members of Congress who oversee NIH. We look forward to working with you and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership to maintain NIH as the world leader of biomedical research.

Our Shared Commitment to Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is a core scientific principle, and we deeply appreciate your public commitment to it at your confirmation hearing, in your April 24 statement on academic freedom, and in recent media interviews. You said: "I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH," "Dissent is the very essence of science," and "...dissenting voices need to be heard and allowed." We hope you will welcome this dissent, which we modeled after your Great Barrington Declaration.

Our Concerns

This Administration has forced NIH, under your watch, to:

1) Politicize research by halting high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts. Academic freedom should not be applied selectively based on political ideology. To achieve political aims, NIH has targeted multiple universities with indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes for ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science. Based on political preferences and without input from NIH scientific staff or Congress, NIH is censoring critical research and programs addressing:

• Health disparities. U.S. Law (42 U.S.C. § 282) states that NIH shall "utilize diverse study populations, with special consideration to biological, social, and other determinants of health that contribute to health disparities." Yet, NIH has stigmatized and abruptly cut off funding for research mislabeled "Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)." Achieving your stated goal to "solve the American chronic disease crisis” requires research addressing the social and structural drivers of health disparities.

• COVID-19, long COVID, and immunization. We still have much to learn about the health and social consequences of COVID-19 and our response. Such research is needed to reduce the risk of future pandemics, optimize pandemic response policies, and address the well-documented and debilitating consequences of long COVID.

• Health impacts of climate change. Substantial evidence shows human-driven climate change leads to higher rates of disease and death, such as asthma, heart disease, and stillbirths. Research is critical to find effective ways to reduce these and other health impacts of climate change.

• Gender identity, sexual health, and the needs of intersex people in the U.S. These topics deserve research attention, and NIH has a long tradition of supporting rigorous research in these fields.

• Broad participation in biomedical research. Robust research shows diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones. A broad workforce strengthens research capacity and supports globally competitive science. Due to misunderstanding of its workforce diversity programs, NIH terminated top-scoring grants to scientists from underrepresented backgrounds, while maintaining poorer-scoring grants from standard pathways, contrary to the merit-based system that makes NIH a global research leader.

Since January 20, 2025, NIH has terminated 2,100 research grants totaling around $9.5 billion and $2.6 billion in contracts. This undercuts long-standing NIH policies designed to maximize return on investment by working with grantees to address concerns and complete studies. Many terminations contradict federal regulations that mandate protections for research participants and require grant awards to specify potential termination reasons. These terminations:

• Throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars. Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it wastes $4 million.

• Shirk commitments to participants, who braved personal risk to give the incredible gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would fuel scientific discovery and improve health.

• Risk participant health. NIH trials are being halted without regard to participant safety, abruptly stopping medications or leaving participants with unmonitored device implants.

• Damage hard-earned public trust, counter to your stated goal to improve trust in NIH.

We urge you as NIH Director to restore grants delayed or terminated for political reasons so that life-saving science can continue.

2) Interrupt global collaboration. We would gladly work with you to improve existing systems to monitor awards with foreign components. But dissolving foreign collaborations while we await new procedures harms research participants and slows scientific discovery, cutting American scientists off from the global scientific community, preventing access to technologies only available abroad, and eliminating critical research that crosses political borders. We urge you as NIH Director to allow rigorously peer-reviewed research with vetted foreign collaborators to continue without disruption.

3) Undermine peer review. Independent peer review is the bedrock of NIH science, directing scarce resources toward the most impactful research and ensuring credible findings that can lead to better health. Without independent peer review, we risk losing scientific integrity and public trust. NIH is ignoring peer review to cater to political whims, pulling applications prior to review and removing high-scoring grants from funding consideration. HHS has redirected this funding to unvetted projects, like the Taubenberger-Memoli vaccine project. We urge you as NIH Director to restore peer review and hold political appointees to the same standards as other scientists.

4) Enact a blanket 15% cap on indirect costs. Until recently, indirect costs were negotiated using well-established criteria, accounting for critical research needs and very real costs, such as buildings, animal facilities, computers, libraries, and administrative support. The arbitrary 15% cap would hinder research, risk viability of universities and hospitals in states across the country, force universities to rescind graduate student positions, limit undergraduate research training, and damage the incredibly successful NIH-university partnerships that have improved health through scientific advances. We urge you as NIH Director to continue indirect rates that account for the research costs borne by academic institutions.

5) Fire essential NIH staff. The cuts to talented, hardworking professionals and critical departments without thought to their purpose or need has slowed the pace of science, held up extramural grant and contract funding, made NIH less transparent and efficient, and put Clinical Center patients at risk. We urge you as NIH Director to reinstate the people who make NIH work.

Delivering on your duty to obligate NIH funds

Combined, these actions have resulted in an unprecedented reduction in NIH spending that does not reflect efficiency but rather a dramatic reduction in life-saving research. Some may use the false impression that NIH funding is not needed to justify the draconian cuts proposed in the President's Budget. This spending slowdown reflects a failure of your legal duty to use congressionally-appropriated funds for critical NIH research. Each day that NIH continues to disrupt research, your ability to deliver on this duty narrows.

Who We Are

We are workers from every Institute and Center at NIH. We are devoted to the NIH mission: to seek and apply fundamental knowledge "to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability." We share your stated goal of supporting impactful research that, as you said at your confirmation hearing, is "vital to our country's future and, indeed, the world's." We work hard every day to carefully steward public funds to drive impactful, cutting-edge research. We want to work together to maintain NIH's tradition of excellence.

On June 9, 2025, we sign this declaration in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. In addition to the named signers, we include anonymous signers and speak for countless others at NIH who share our concerns but who — due to a culture of fear and suppression created by this Administration — chose not to sign their names for fear of retaliation.

Click here to see the NIH Staff Signatories