Covid’s research financing to be reduced, and national health institutes documents appear
Studies on Covid, Notification and South Africa are on the grant list that has been completed by the National Institutes of American Health, according to the updated documents obtained by nature
The colored electron microscope for the programmed cell death cell (Green brownSARS-COV-2 (SARS-COV-2)Clove color), Isolated from the patient’s sample.
The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health/Flechr
The National Institutes of American Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began canceling billions of dollars in financing research related to Covid-19.
COVID-19 research boxes for a limited purpose: to improve the effects of the epidemic, “according to the NIH Decoration that nature It has been obtained and provides the agency’s employees updated on how to finish these grants. “Now after the epidemic is over, grant funds are no longer necessary,” the document says. It is not clear that the number of these grants will be completed.
The campaign comes at a time when the National Institutes of Health arrested, during the era of US President Donald Trump, nearly 400 grants last month. Previous version of documents, It was obtained by nature On March 5Employees who are to identify projects for and cancel the number of transgender people; Sexual identity Diversity, fairness and inclusion (Dei) In the scientific workforce; Environmental justice.
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National Institutes of Health, which is the largest public financier in the world Biomatic medical researchGrants grants to about 600 continuous projects that include “Covid” in the title, at a value of about $ 850 million. These projects together constitute approximately 2 % of the National Institutes of Health of $ 47 billion. The Disease Control Center plans to cancel 11.4 billion dollars of money to respond to the epidemic, NBC news reports.
SARS-COV-2, Virus This causes Covid-19, killing more than 7 million people worldwide, including more than 1.2 million in the United States, and continues to injure and kill people. Scientists say that the study of the virus, the infection and the government’s response to the epidemic is crucial to preventing the coming scientists.
Among NIH’s fines are a program worth $ 577 million to determine and develop antiviral drugs against SARS-COV-2 and six other types of viruses with the potential of the epidemic.
“These short-sighted ends-we strongly need new treatments against viruses,” says Jason McLillan, a structural virus at the University of Texas, Austin, who was a widespread spectrum treatment project against several types of viruses as part of the program and finished on March 24. “To cancel the entire grant because a small part includes SARS-COV-2 will be dangerous to prepare in the future for the epidemic.”
The National Institutes of Health did not respond natureInquiries about ending grants or scholars’ concerns about them. Mother Organization, the US Department of Health and Humanitarian Services (HHS) said, nature The “Covid-19s has ended, and HHS will not be lost billions of taxpayers that respond to a vase that is not present by the Americans for years.”
An updated guidance
The updated documents that nature (See the supplementary information below) was sent on March 25 to “Grant Management Specialists”-members of employees who supervise the commercial aspect for financing grant. This document includes Covid-19 in the list of “research activities that NIH is no longer supported”, as well as research on China, Dei, and “sexually transgender issues” and the frequency of vaccines. The latest directives also say that the grants are related South Africa Climate change must be ended.
The document also determines a new category of research to be completed: any project in the list sent by the Director of the National Institutes of Health or HHS, which is currently led by the long anti -accurate lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
An unprecedented large -scale curricula; The agency usually eliminates only a few dozen projects every year in response to dangerous concerns about misconduct or research fraud – and it only does this as a last resort, after taking other measures such as comment.
Grants management specialists will be assigned to determine and end projects, because the leadership of the current national health institutes considers its scientific employees very biased to make these decisions, says an official at the National Health Institutes of Health, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
But some scientists are afraid that the guidelines of the National Health Institutes of Health are very mysterious and that any research project is linked to some keywords can be on the cutting block without considering their merit. “They were taking a saw for a grant and not a surgical laser,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virus at the University of Saaskashwan in Saaskaton, Canada, who is studying SARS Cove -2.
Coveyd long
Under the new guidance, it is unclear whether the national health institutes are planning to close long research, including a $ 1.6 billion recovery initiative, which aims to find the root causes and treatments of the disease. The Trump administration seems to prevent long length: this week, HHS will close its office from long research and practice, which coordinates the US government’s response to the disease, according to email correspondence. nature It happened.
This is a “real slap in the face of many patients who struggle with the long -term health effects of Covid,” says Jennifer Nuzu, the epidemic scientist and director of the epidemic at the University of Brown at Proventins, Rod Island.
Kennedy pledged to “make America healthy again”, partly by repairing US health agencies to focus on chronic diseases. Nuzu says that the “wholesale grouping campaign” in Kofid’s research is not a spirit of campaign. “We must study how infections cause some of the worst diseases to which society is exposed,” she says, adding that the research has linked the infection to the common herpes virus called Epstein Barr to develop multiple sclerosis.
“If we do not discover this now with this epidemic, I am afraid that we will be less prepared for future clubs,” says Akiko Iyusaki, the Yale of Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, who studies immune responses in people with Cofide and other subsequent conditions after viruses.
This article is cloned with permission It was first published On March 26, 2025.