The US National Institutes of Health is Responding to the Suggestions from Nature and State Attorney’s Offices Concerning the Shutdown of Research Grants

The US National Institutes of Health, based in Rockville, Maryland has tried to slash the money it gives for direct research costs since Donald Trump took office. Researchers are not rolling over. The US Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases are the targets of five lawsuits filed by scientific bodies and state attorneys.

Nature didn’t get a response from the US Department of Human Services or the National Institute for Allergy and Clinical Immunology regarding their concerns about the terminated scientists.

An analysis by Nature shows that of the terminated projects, about one-fourth are related to COVID-19 and 29% are related to HIV/AIDS. One reason for the focus of these cuts is that the Trump administration has said that the COVID-19 pandemic is over and people in the United States have moved on from it. Another potential reason is that HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects sexual and gender minorities (LGBT+); Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office on 20 January, directing the US government to stop acknowledging the fact that a person’s gender can differ from their sex at birth.

These actions deny “a small but real percentage of the population answers to critically important questions about their health”, Tilghman says. “You cannot eliminate a segment of the population by executive order, but you can harm them greatly.”

Trump’s team has targeted research grants at Columbia, cancelling $400 million to the university because, the administration has said, it failed to protect Jewish students from harassment during campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.

All five cases make arguments based on the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a 1946 statute that governs how federal administrative bodies establish regulations. The complaints argue that the NIH’s actions have been “arbitrary and capricious” rather than following normal procedures.

The US Department of Justice and the HHS are both defendants in a suit regarding the cancellation of grants and funding at Columbia University.

Researchers found that it was taking longer for new grant applications to be processed. 16 US states filed a complaint with the FDA in April claiming that only half of the historical average has been achieved so far in the federal agency’s grant review process.