Latest news with #StandUpForScience
CNN
09-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
NIH employees publish ‘Bethesda Declaration' in dissent of Trump administration policies
FacebookTweetLink Follow In October 2020, two months before Covid-19 vaccines would become available in the US, Stanford health policy professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and two colleagues published an open letter calling for a contrarian approach to managing the risks of the pandemic: protecting the most vulnerable while allowing others largely to resume normal life, aiming to obtain herd immunity through infection with the virus. They called it the Great Barrington Declaration, for the Massachusetts town where they signed it. Backlash to it was swift, with the director-general of the World Health Organization calling the idea of allowing a dangerous new virus to sweep through unprotected populations 'unethical.' Bhattacharya later testified before Congress that it – and he – immediately became targets of suppression and censorship by those leading scientific agencies. Now, Bhattacharya is the one in charge, and staffers at the agency he leads, the US National Institutes of Health, published their own letter of dissent, taking issue with what they see as the politicization of research and destruction of scientific progress under the Trump administration. They called it the Bethesda Declaration, for the location of the NIH. 'We hope you will welcome this dissent, which we modeled after your Great Barrington Declaration,' the staffers wrote. The letter was signed by more than 300 employees across the biomedical research agency, according to the non-profit organization Stand Up for Science, which also posted it; while many employees signed anonymously because of fears of retaliation, nearly 100 - from graduate students to division chiefs - signed by name. It comes the day before Bhattacharya is due to testify before Congress once more, in a budget hearing to be held Tuesday by the Senate appropriations committee. It's just the latest sign of strife from inside the NIH, where some staff last month staged a walkout of a townhall with Bhattacharya to protest working conditions and an inability to discuss them with the director. 'If we don't speak up, we allow continued harm to research participants and public health in America and across the globe,' said Dr. Jenna Norton, a program officer at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and a lead organizer of the Declaration, in a news release from Stand Up for Science. She emphasized she was speaking in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the NIH. The letter, which the staffers said they also sent to US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH, urged Bhattacharya to 'restore grants delayed or terminated for political reasons so that life-saving science can continue,' citing work in areas including health disparities, Covid-19, health impacts of climate change and others. They cited findings by two scientists that said about 2,100 NIH grants for about $9.5 billion have been terminated since the second Trump administration began. The NIH budget had been about $48 billion annually, and the Trump administration has proposed cutting it next year by about 40%. The research terminations 'throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars,' the NIH staffers wrote. 'Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it wastes $4 million.' They also urged Bhattacharya to reverse a policy that aims to implement a new, and lower, flat 15% rate for paying for indirect costs of research at universities, which supports shared lab space, buildings, instruments and other infrastructure, as well as the firing of essential NIH staff. Those who wrote the Bethesda Declaration were joined Monday by outside supporters, in a second letter posted by Stand Up for Science and signed by members of the public, including more than a dozen Nobel Prize-winning scientists. 'We urge NIH and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership to work with NIH staff to return the NIH to its mission and to abandon the strategy of using NIH as a tool for achieving political goals unrelated to that mission,' they wrote. The letter called for the grant-making process to be conducted by scientifically trained NIH staff, guided by rigorous peer review, not by 'anonymous individuals outside of NIH.' It also challenged assertions put forward by Kennedy, who often compares today's health outcomes with those around the time his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, in the early 1960s. 'Since 1960, the death rate due to heart disease has been cut in half, going from 560 deaths per 100,000 people to approximately 230 deaths per 100,000 today,' they wrote. 'From 1960 to the present day, the five-year survival rate for childhood leukemia has increased nearly 10-fold, to over 90% for some forms. In 1960, the rate of measles infection was approximately 250 cases per 100,000 people compared with a near zero rate now (at least until recently).' They acknowledged there's still much work to do, including addressing obesity, diabetes and opioid dependency, 'but,' they wrote, 'glamorizing a mythical past while ignoring important progress made through biomedical research does not enhance the health of the American people.' Support from the NIH, they argued, made the US 'the internationally recognized hub for biomedical research and training,' leading to major advances in improving human health. 'I've never heard anybody say, 'I'm just so frustrated that the government is spending so much money on cancer research, or trying to address Alzheimer's,' ' said Dr. Jeremy Berg, who organized the letter of outside support and previously served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. 'Health concerns are a universal human concern,' Berg told CNN. 'The NIH system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but has been unbelievably productive in terms of generating progress on specific diseases.'
CNN
09-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
NIH employees publish ‘Bethesda Declaration' in dissent of Trump administration policies
In October 2020, two months before Covid-19 vaccines would become available in the US, Stanford health policy professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and two colleagues published an open letter calling for a contrarian approach to managing the risks of the pandemic: protecting the most vulnerable while allowing others largely to resume normal life, aiming to obtain herd immunity through infection with the virus. They called it the Great Barrington Declaration, for the Massachusetts town where they signed it. Backlash to it was swift, with the director-general of the World Health Organization calling the idea of allowing a dangerous new virus to sweep through unprotected populations 'unethical.' Bhattacharya later testified before Congress that it – and he – immediately became targets of suppression and censorship by those leading scientific agencies. Now, Bhattacharya is the one in charge, and staffers at the agency he leads, the US National Institutes of Health, published their own letter of dissent, taking issue with what they see as the politicization of research and destruction of scientific progress under the Trump administration. They called it the Bethesda Declaration, for the location of the NIH. 'We hope you will welcome this dissent, which we modeled after your Great Barrington Declaration,' the staffers wrote. The letter was signed by more than 300 employees across the biomedical research agency, according to the non-profit organization Stand Up for Science, which also posted it; while many employees signed anonymously because of fears of retaliation, nearly 100 - from graduate students to division chiefs - signed by name. It comes the day before Bhattacharya is due to testify before Congress once more, in a budget hearing to be held Tuesday by the Senate appropriations committee. It's just the latest sign of strife from inside the NIH, where some staff last month staged a walkout of a townhall with Bhattacharya to protest working conditions and an inability to discuss them with the director. 'If we don't speak up, we allow continued harm to research participants and public health in America and across the globe,' said Dr. Jenna Norton, a program officer at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and a lead organizer of the Declaration, in a news release from Stand Up for Science. She emphasized she was speaking in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the NIH. The letter, which the staffers said they also sent to US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH, urged Bhattacharya to 'restore grants delayed or terminated for political reasons so that life-saving science can continue,' citing work in areas including health disparities, Covid-19, health impacts of climate change and others. They cited findings by two scientists that said about 2,100 NIH grants for about $9.5 billion have been terminated since the second Trump administration began. The NIH budget had been about $48 billion annually, and the Trump administration has proposed cutting it next year by about 40%. The research terminations 'throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars,' the NIH staffers wrote. 'Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it wastes $4 million.' They also urged Bhattacharya to reverse a policy that aims to implement a new, and lower, flat 15% rate for paying for indirect costs of research at universities, which supports shared lab space, buildings, instruments and other infrastructure, as well as the firing of essential NIH staff. Those who wrote the Bethesda Declaration were joined Monday by outside supporters, in a second letter posted by Stand Up for Science and signed by members of the public, including more than a dozen Nobel Prize-winning scientists. 'We urge NIH and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership to work with NIH staff to return the NIH to its mission and to abandon the strategy of using NIH as a tool for achieving political goals unrelated to that mission,' they wrote. The letter called for the grant-making process to be conducted by scientifically trained NIH staff, guided by rigorous peer review, not by 'anonymous individuals outside of NIH.' It also challenged assertions put forward by Kennedy, who often compares today's health outcomes with those around the time his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, in the early 1960s. 'Since 1960, the death rate due to heart disease has been cut in half, going from 560 deaths per 100,000 people to approximately 230 deaths per 100,000 today,' they wrote. 'From 1960 to the present day, the five-year survival rate for childhood leukemia has increased nearly 10-fold, to over 90% for some forms. In 1960, the rate of measles infection was approximately 250 cases per 100,000 people compared with a near zero rate now (at least until recently).' They acknowledged there's still much work to do, including addressing obesity, diabetes and opioid dependency, 'but,' they wrote, 'glamorizing a mythical past while ignoring important progress made through biomedical research does not enhance the health of the American people.' Support from the NIH, they argued, made the US 'the internationally recognized hub for biomedical research and training,' leading to major advances in improving human health. 'I've never heard anybody say, 'I'm just so frustrated that the government is spending so much money on cancer research, or trying to address Alzheimer's,' ' said Dr. Jeremy Berg, who organized the letter of outside support and previously served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. 'Health concerns are a universal human concern,' Berg told CNN. 'The NIH system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but has been unbelievably productive in terms of generating progress on specific diseases.'
CNN
09-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
NIH employees publish ‘Bethesda Declaration' in dissent of Trump administration policies
In October 2020, two months before Covid-19 vaccines would become available in the US, Stanford health policy professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and two colleagues published an open letter calling for a contrarian approach to managing the risks of the pandemic: protecting the most vulnerable while allowing others largely to resume normal life, aiming to obtain herd immunity through infection with the virus. They called it the Great Barrington Declaration, for the Massachusetts town where they signed it. Backlash to it was swift, with the director-general of the World Health Organization calling the idea of allowing a dangerous new virus to sweep through unprotected populations 'unethical.' Bhattacharya later testified before Congress that it – and he – immediately became targets of suppression and censorship by those leading scientific agencies. Now, Bhattacharya is the one in charge, and staffers at the agency he leads, the US National Institutes of Health, published their own letter of dissent, taking issue with what they see as the politicization of research and destruction of scientific progress under the Trump administration. They called it the Bethesda Declaration, for the location of the NIH. 'We hope you will welcome this dissent, which we modeled after your Great Barrington Declaration,' the staffers wrote. The letter was signed by more than 300 employees across the biomedical research agency, according to the non-profit organization Stand Up for Science, which also posted it; while many employees signed anonymously because of fears of retaliation, nearly 100 - from graduate students to division chiefs - signed by name. It comes the day before Bhattacharya is due to testify before Congress once more, in a budget hearing to be held Tuesday by the Senate appropriations committee. It's just the latest sign of strife from inside the NIH, where some staff last month staged a walkout of a townhall with Bhattacharya to protest working conditions and an inability to discuss them with the director. 'If we don't speak up, we allow continued harm to research participants and public health in America and across the globe,' said Dr. Jenna Norton, a program officer at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and a lead organizer of the Declaration, in a news release from Stand Up for Science. She emphasized she was speaking in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the NIH. The letter, which the staffers said they also sent to US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH, urged Bhattacharya to 'restore grants delayed or terminated for political reasons so that life-saving science can continue,' citing work in areas including health disparities, Covid-19, health impacts of climate change and others. They cited findings by two scientists that said about 2,100 NIH grants for about $9.5 billion have been terminated since the second Trump administration began. The NIH budget had been about $48 billion annually, and the Trump administration has proposed cutting it next year by about 40%. The research terminations 'throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars,' the NIH staffers wrote. 'Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it wastes $4 million.' They also urged Bhattacharya to reverse a policy that aims to implement a new, and lower, flat 15% rate for paying for indirect costs of research at universities, which supports shared lab space, buildings, instruments and other infrastructure, as well as the firing of essential NIH staff. Those who wrote the Bethesda Declaration were joined Monday by outside supporters, in a second letter posted by Stand Up for Science and signed by members of the public, including more than a dozen Nobel Prize-winning scientists. 'We urge NIH and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership to work with NIH staff to return the NIH to its mission and to abandon the strategy of using NIH as a tool for achieving political goals unrelated to that mission,' they wrote. The letter called for the grant-making process to be conducted by scientifically trained NIH staff, guided by rigorous peer review, not by 'anonymous individuals outside of NIH.' It also challenged assertions put forward by Kennedy, who often compares today's health outcomes with those around the time his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, in the early 1960s. 'Since 1960, the death rate due to heart disease has been cut in half, going from 560 deaths per 100,000 people to approximately 230 deaths per 100,000 today,' they wrote. 'From 1960 to the present day, the five-year survival rate for childhood leukemia has increased nearly 10-fold, to over 90% for some forms. In 1960, the rate of measles infection was approximately 250 cases per 100,000 people compared with a near zero rate now (at least until recently).' They acknowledged there's still much work to do, including addressing obesity, diabetes and opioid dependency, 'but,' they wrote, 'glamorizing a mythical past while ignoring important progress made through biomedical research does not enhance the health of the American people.' Support from the NIH, they argued, made the US 'the internationally recognized hub for biomedical research and training,' leading to major advances in improving human health. 'I've never heard anybody say, 'I'm just so frustrated that the government is spending so much money on cancer research, or trying to address Alzheimer's,' ' said Dr. Jeremy Berg, who organized the letter of outside support and previously served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. 'Health concerns are a universal human concern,' Berg told CNN. 'The NIH system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but has been unbelievably productive in terms of generating progress on specific diseases.'
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Newsom pushes back against potential federal cuts to California public universities
The Brief Sources told CNN that the Trump administration is targeting California universities over alleged antisemitism on campus. Newsom is threatening to withhold federal tax dollars if the cuts go through. PALO ALTO, Calif. - California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing back amid reports that the Trump administration is considering cutting federal funding for the University of California and California State University systems. A White House spokesperson told CNN no final decision has been made. Still, Newsom is threatening to withhold federal tax dollars if the cuts go through. H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the governor, responded to the CNN report on Friday. "Let's have a serious discussion about how much California contributes to the national economy," said Palmer. Newsom also took to X, posting, "Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it's time to cut that off." In Palo Alto, community members responded to the potential federal cuts to universities during a rally in defense of science research and academic funding. "We want to preserve our democracy, our science, and our medicine," said Carol Peyser, an organizer of the "Stand Up for Science and Sanity" demonstration. Big picture view Next year's federal budget proposal includes cuts of 40% to the National Institutes of Health and 55% to the National Science Foundation. Peyser and others expressed concern that additional cuts could reverse decades of progress in scientific research and public health. "The attacks on the universities are really severe and not what we voted for. People did not vote for this," Peyser said. "It's absurd, and it's not just going to hurt California. We develop technology that goes all over the country and supports our economy." The Source Original KTVU reporting
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
UNM post-docs forewarn threats to research at Stand Up for Science event
Graduate student Alex Connolly signs a letter to U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) as part of the New Mexico Stand Up for Science outreach on the last day of spring semester classes. (Danielle Prokop / Source NM) On the last day of classes for the spring semester, organizers for the New Mexico Stand Up for Science tabled at the University of New Mexico, asking more students to join efforts to protest White House efforts to dismantle funding mechanisms for science research. 'The intent really is to make sure that people don't lose steam throughout the summer,' said Nina Christie, a post-doctoral researcher studying substance use. The group is part of a national movement seeking an expansion of research science funding and reinstating research cuts under anti-diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. UNM could face $20 million in lost funding under NIH rule The cuts, led by Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, have impacted billions of dollars in research — including a UNM neuroscience researcher studying impacts of repeated traumatic brain injuries, who spoke at an earlier protest at the New Mexico Legislature. About two dozen students stopped by over the course of 45 minutes. Some UNM employees also visited, including undergraduate advisors Madison Castiellano-Donovan and Dylan Velez. Velez told Source NM some of the psychology students whom they advise are expressing uncertainty in finding future jobs, wanting to graduate early or 'considering switching majors altogether' due to the cuts to higher education. Matison McCool, a post-doctoral researcher in substance abuse research, said lost funding will close doors for upcoming students. 'Without general training grants in place, without that infrastructure, there simply won't be pathways to get into science anymore, for people who want to do that,' he said. McCool said he also hoped the effort to organize will push the university to further protect funding. 'I want to hear concrete steps the administration is going to take and plan on taking to help continue funding researchers who lost their grants, and finding the resources for funding science,' he said. McCool said the recent 2026 Budget Request from the White House proposes Congress halve the National Science Foundation by more than $4.7 billion, and cut the National Institutes of Health budget by more than $17 billion dollars. 'That will devastate cancer trial research, substance trial use research — that is a fact,' he said. 'We cannot fund these studies that are solving these problems, people will die if these studies don't exist.' His own five-year research grant hasn't been impacted yet, but he's concerned that research will only get more limited, and he worries the grant could be rescinded at any time. 'The hardest part is looking at these White House proposed budgets and thinking 'I don't have a job in five years,'' he said. 'This may be the only science I ever get to do.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
