Eric Green was the first institute director forced out of NIH. He still hasn't been told why.

Boston Globe

2 days ago

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'I do believe there were people put into the department by the White House before Kennedy arrived. I think they had their agenda for who was going to get terminated, and why and how.'
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Green, who spent about three decades at NIH, reflected on his experience as a precursor of the thousands of layoffs that roiled the agency in the weeks since. He insisted he had been ready and willing to work with the new leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services — though he lambasted many of the suite of changes and proposals made by the current administration.
The administration used something of a bureaucratic technicality to remove Green from his position. Institute and center directors are appointed to five-year terms, which are tied to external reviews from the scientific community. But they can serve multiple terms, and no director had failed to be renewed.
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The paperwork and reviews for Green to be renewed were submitted by the Biden administration in December 2024, with the expectation he would be granted another term beginning March 17. His appointment was the first to be up for renewal since Trump was inaugurated. 'I drew the short straw,' Green said.
Just three days before he was supposed to begin his new term, Green asked about the renewal, and he said it quickly became clear there was no plan to keep him.
'I was in what turned out to be a very dramatic week of back and forth and attempts to save me,' he said. Memoli seemingly agreed to keep Green on as a senior adviser, and he said at least one member of Congress campaigned to keep him in his post. He declined to name that lawmaker.
Ultimately 'they just chose not to reappoint me, and it was basically a convenient way to decapitate a leader at NIH. I was never told why,' Green said.
In the early days of the administration, he was one of several dozen employees at the federal health agencies to be placed on a '
Green had been a vocal advocate for promoting diversity in genomic datasets as well as the research workforce. He said the issue was important for the veracity of the science coming out of his institute, and for geneticists' ability to connect with a diverse population. But, ultimately it was simply part of his duty, given the emphasis the Biden administration put on the issue.
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In his career, Green served a mix of Democratic and Republican presidents — Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. 'As a public servant, you adapt. You have to sort of lean left, you lean right. So, Biden really pushed DEI, and it was a required element in my performance plan. So I did my job,' he said. Just as he had shifted NHGRI's priorities under the Biden administration, he had already begun the process of reorienting the institute's work toward chronic disease, a focus of Kennedy's. 'That's the tragic thing,' he said. 'We were all poised to align, because that's what we do as dedicated federal workers.'
Green feels a special onus to prioritize work that centers on diverse populations given genetics' fraught history with the eugenics movement, which promoted the idea that preferable genetic traits should be encouraged, and other traits should be eliminated through measures like forced sterilization or genocide. Green sees 'tinges' of the eugenics movement in the recent backlash against diversity initiatives.
'I think it's evil,' he said of the administration's vilification of diversity initiatives. While he said there is room for reasonable discussion around the best ways to promote equity, 'I think underpinning a lot of this by some people, is just overt racism and prejudices.'
Serving as 'consoler in chief'
In the wake of his termination, Green continued going to the NIH campus in Bethesda for several weeks, helping his former staff navigate the uncharted waters it was in. While he was no longer being paid, Green felt as if he had been forced to 'orphan' his staff. His deputy director, Vence Bonham, was made acting director — only to be
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Green was at NIH on April 1, when sweeping layoffs hit the entirety of the Department of Health and Human Services. 'I was there as the consoler in chief on April 1, when all hell broke loose,' he said. 'They took out all of my communications people, all of my education people, all my policy people, all my workforce development people, which were all my staff that have offices surrounding my suite. It's like all my immediate, daily family just got decimated.'
In the two months since, the administration has begun making numerous changes to the NIH, from the way external research is paid for to how it will fund foreign-based scientists collaborating with US researchers. While he believes there are ways the agency can be improved, Green took issue with some of the changes.
He called proposed revisions to research funding for overhead costs, called indirect costs, that would mean slashing payments to many leading universities, 'stupid and naive.' The current system is far from perfect but, 'we should optimize it. We shouldn't weaponize it,' he said. 'Let's get smart people in a room, including from business and from economics and from government and policy. Let's think about what is the right partnership between the federal government and the academic biomedical ecosystem.'
He added that funding decisions are being made by people who don't seem to appreciate the implications of the cuts on biomedical research. 'It's all political, and it's punitive, and they're not engaging the experts to know what the implications of how you're harming the ecosystem are.'
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The administration has also floated a 40 percent cut to funding for the NIH along with a massive reduction in the number of institutes it has. Green is hopeful Congress won't go along with such a drastic reduction, but if it were to come to pass, he said 'it'll be decades before we recover. I think other countries will surpass us quickly. I think it'll be catastrophic.'
A more pressing concern, he said, is the administration's centralization of grant reviews. In the past, the NIH has employed reviewers at each of its institutes alongside a centralized staff at the Center for Scientific Review. While the latter typically approves more grants, Green worries its staff will not see the promise in innovative research.
'You think you're stamping out waste, fraud, and abuse,' he said. 'You're also stamping out innovation and creativity and the cutting edge.'
Green is looking for his next gig. He hopes to return to academia, to mentor and teach students. He said he is excited about teaching students who may not be geneticists. But, he's also on standby to help rebuild the NIH.
He said he is not sure who would take up the mantle of NHGRI director at such a tumultuous time.
'The current state of the NIH is unsustainable, because there's too much functionality that's been destroyed and lost. So many of us will be [at the] ready to help, advise, or do whatever, rebuild it brick by brick,' he said. 'People keep asking me 'How long will it take to rebuild?' I don't know the answer. I don't know how much more damage is going to be done.'
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