Hundreds of current and former staffers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are urging agency Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., to reverse the drastic changes made within the last five months, including the termination of about $9.5 billion in federal research grants.
Since President Donald Trump's inauguration, the NIH has ended 2,100 research grants worth around $9.5 billion and contracts worth $2.6 billion, the authors wrote in the June 9 Bethesda Declaration. The lost funds include grants for biomedical research at major universities like Harvard, research on LGBTQ+ health issues and programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
The declaration calls out the NIH for politically motivated censoring of certain research areas such as racial health disparities, the health effects of climate change, COVID-19, gender identity and the health needs of intersex people.
The sudden cancellation of funds has caused some clinical trials to stop in their tracks, the declaration authors wrote, jeopardizing patient health.
"NIH trials are being halted without regard to participant safety, abruptly stopping medications or leaving participants with unmonitored device implants," the declaration says.
In addition to calls for reversing grant cuts and firings, the declaration also urges Bhattacharya to restore resources to peer review, not change indirect rates on grants and not interfere with research with foreign collaborators.
The declaration’s signatories, numbering more than 300, include numerous program directors, program officers, staff scientists and former employees from “every institute and center at NIH,” according to the authors. While some are anonymous, many signed with their names, and some signatories are no longer with the agency after being affected by the recent layoffs.
“We dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe,” the authors wrote. “Many have raised these concerns to NIH leadership, yet we remain pressured to implement harmful measures.”
“The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international collaboration,” Bhattacharya said in an emailed statement to Fierce Biotech. “Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to succeed.”
"There has been no halt to legitimate international collaborations," a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson added. "The current scrutiny of foreign subawards centers on ensuring accountability, which is a basic fiduciary responsibility."
An open letter of support associated with the declaration has attracted thousands of signatures, including from many Nobel Prize laureates like Carolyn Bertozzi, Ph.D.; Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D.; and David Baker, Ph.D.
The authors said they modeled their declaration after the Great Barrington Declaration, the controversial open letter Bhattacharya co-authored in 2020 supporting an end to pandemic lockdowns and the promotion of herd immunity. The Great Barrington Declaration was decried by experts and public health organizations as dangerous and unscientific.
The new declaration gets its name from Bethesda, Maryland, the home of NIH headquarters.
The Bethesda Declaration follows the unveiling of Trump’s 2026 budget proposal (PDF), which recommends slashing the budget of the NIH by about 40%. In response to the proposed cuts, which also includes a nearly 37% reduction in funding for the National Cancer Institute, the CEOs of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network both released statements condemning the proposal.