More than 300 scientists from the National Health Institutes (NIH) signed a open letter On Monday morning, director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, criticizing the Trump administration for recent movements.
The letter, including 92 signed names and 250 anonymous but verified signatories, shares concerns that the investigation is being politicized, global collaboration is being interrupted and that the budget and personnel cuts have hindered NIH’s ability to do an important investigation.
“[W]Enjoy the administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources and damage the health of Americans and people around the world, “the letter says.” We are obliged to speak when our leadership prioritizes political impulse over human security and faithful administration of public resources. “
Some of the NIH scientists who signed the letter, speaking in their personal capacity and not on behalf of the agency, told ABC News that they and their colleagues have tried to raise concerns internally, and repeatedly, but it was in vain.
They said that there is now an urgency to speak, especially because Bhattacharya is Establish in testifying On Tuesday at a hearing before the Senate Assignments Committee on the NIH Budget proposed for the next fiscal year.
“There is a lot of risk to speak, and I am still very scared, even after it has already been done, even after it has already been said,” said Jenna Norton, a programs officer of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Renal Diseases of the NIH and one of the main organizers of the Charter, said ABC News. “I think many people focus on the risk of speaking, but we must also think about the risk of not speaking.”
The director of the National Health Institutes of Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya has a copy of a Maha Health Report during an event of the Maha Commission (Make America Healthy Again) in the White House, on May 22, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Images
The letter, called Bethesda’s statement, NIH is based in Bethesda, Maryland, is modeled after Great Declaration of Barringtonof which Bhattacharya was co -author.
Published in October 2020 and bears the name of the city of Massachusetts in which it was recruited, Great Barrington’s statement requested that COVID-19 blocks are avoided and a new plan to handle the pandemic to protect the most vulnerable people is avoided, but allowing the majority to resume normal activities, achieving the immunity of the herd naturally.
At that time, public health professionals criticized him widely, including Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, general director of the World Health Organization, who saying Allowing a virus “We do not completely understand running freely is simply unusual.” During Testimony before Congress In March 2023, Bhattacharya said the statement was the objective of “suppression” by federal health officials.
“We model Bethesda’s statement after the Great Barrington’s statement … because we wanted him to see himself in our action,” Norton said. “He has spoken a lot about his commitment to academic freedom and dissent. If Jay Bhattacharya is the person who affirms very publicly, and if he is really in charge of Nih, our hope is that this moves him to action. And if he is not the person who says or is not in charge of Nih, I think that the public and congress should be aware of that.”
The letter asked Bhattacharya to reverse subsidies that have been delayed or finished for “political reasons” and allowing work with foreign collaborators.
The signatories also asked Bhattacharya to rey a policy that limits indirect costs for 15% research and restored the essential personnel who was fired to NIH.
“Bethesda’s statement has some fundamental erroneous concepts on the instructions of the policy that NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuous support of NIH for international collaboration,” Bhattacharya said in a statement to ABC News. “However, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want NIH to succeed.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health & Human Services told ABC News that the agency has not stopped the “legitimate” collaborations with international partners. In addition, the spokesman said that other financiers, such as the Gates Foundation, indirect costs to 15% and that each termination case is being reviewed.
Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral researcher of the NIH National Medical Institute of Medical Sciences whose work focused on antimicrobial resistance, told ABC News that seeing changes in the agency has been a “traumatic experience.”
He said that when the Trump administration entered the position, he was prevented from investigating in his laboratory because he could not buy essential items and was not allowed to attend a conference in February to speak with possible collaborators. He also saw many of his co -workers who are accidentally ended and then restored.
“It’s really traumatic and really harmful to NIH researchers,” said Morgan, who signed the letter. “We enter this not because we are trying to earn money, not for our own benefit. We are entering this because we want to serve the public. We want to do an investigation that saves lives.”
Sarah Kobrin, head of the NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) branch that also signed the letter, said before the new administration, worked with researchers interested in receiving funds from NCI or who already had funds and requested help from NCI.
However, with more than 2,100 research grants for a total of around $ 9.5 billion finished in NIH, according to the letter, he said that some of his daily tasks have changed.
The Gateway center of the National Health Institutes (NIH) is seen in the rain in Bethesda, Maryland, June 8, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
“I spend my time on the phone now talking to people who have just learned that their projects have been cut and have given false pseudoscientific reasons to say that their work is not valuable, not important for public health for the United States, and it is simply not true,” Kobrin told ABC News.
NIH researchers told ABC News that there is a public letter that people can Sign to express your support Or you can contact your Congress representatives to express their concerns.
Morgan, the antimicrobial researcher, said he does not want the letter to only detail all the changes that occurred in NIH since Trump assumed the position.
“We are standing and demonstrating that not everything is lost, and there has certainly been irreparable damage, but we still have time to correct the ship and take it in the right direction,” he said. “I need to leave people with that message of hope because, otherwise, they can feel that there is nothing they can do, and that we are helpless, but we are all powerful.”
The Trump administration did not respond immediately to the request for comments from ABC News.
