27 UNIHTED / NIH Vigils Newsletter 10/4/26

Written By Cara AB

Hi NIH Vigilers and 27 UNIHTED Community,

This week we are reminded of a quote from The Endless Frontier, by Vannevar Bush:  “The Government should take an active role in promoting the international flow of scientific information.”  27 UNIHTED agrees!

So, how is our research ecosystem faring this week?  Here are the highlights:

Vigil “Auntie” News 

- The Good -

27 UNIHTED highlights the critical role of international collaboration

27 UNIHTED published “Disruption of Global Research is Endangering People in the United States and Around the World.”  It begins “science is a global pursuit.  We make the most progress when we work with scientists from every part of the world.  But Bhattacharya’s NIH has interrupted collaboration with our colleagues abroad.  That harms everyone, including Americans.”  For the last 80 years, American science has benefited from unfettered cooperation with scientists around the world.  The article emphasizes the importance of fostering, rather than discouraging, international collaboration, which has been instrumental in improving diagnoses, treatment and care for Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, and rare diseases, not to mention prevention and treatment of countless infectious diseases that would otherwise threaten lives at home and abroad.  

eBook brings HOPE 

A new ebook by Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou and Jenna M. Norton titled Hope: A Public Health Blueprint for Action was published this week by the American Public Health Association.  The book was written by one former and one current NIH employee, both Bethesda Declaration organizers.*  Chou and Norton’s ebook outlines many of the same challenges facing NIH that are described each week here in the 27 UNIHTED Vigils newsletter.  However, the ebook also offers hope and concrete ways to fight for what you believe in.  It concludes “when the road ahead is flat and paved, we amble along, pockets overflowing with hope for a bright future.  When the terrain becomes rugged, filled with mountains and fissures that obstruct our path, hope requires honesty, vision, action, and community.”  This short ebook can be downloaded for free at the publisher’s website.  27 UNIHTED Vigils newsletter gives it two thumbs up.

*For those who missed it, the Bethesda Declaration is a public statement signed by hundreds of NIH employees and supporters protesting the politicalization of biomedical research. Don’t miss the Bethesda Declaration One Year Later that delineates the continuing harms of actions taken by the administration.  

Congress reauthorizes Accelerating Access to Critical Therapies for ALS   

The ACT for ALS reauthorization, covering FY26-FY31, passed both the House and the Senate.  It reauthorizes research programs that support the development of drugs and other therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease) and other neurodegenerative diseases.  The bill reauthorizes grants from NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and a public-private partnership including the FDA and NIH that supports development and regulatory review of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.     

The community speaks out against the loss of clinical trials training

The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) has published an open letter to the NIH regarding proposed changes to K awards.  In August, NIH published a notice stating that as of October 12, 2026, “K award funds may not be used to support the conduct of a clinical trial, clinical trial feasibility study, or ancillary study to an existing clinical trial.” At the same time, NIH is seeking input on other approaches to support the development of future clinical trial investigators (NOT-OD-26-095).  The ASCI letter asks that NIH keep the current programs in place until such a time as new programs have been established and tested for efficacy against the current method to avoid a generational gap in the development of this important skill set, especially given the current dearth of trained physician-scientists.  The letter is co-signed by 30 professional organizations and societies.

More Good News:

  • Senators Chuck Schumer, Edward Markey, and Bernie Sanders sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and CDC director Erica Schwartz, demanding to know why the CDC waited nearly a month to make vaccines available through the Vaccines for Children Program. 

  • Some states are trying to fill the gap in funding for scientific research.  In March 2028, California voters will decide if they should create a $7.5 billion state scientific research institution; a mini-National Institutes of Health. 

  • NIH Launches $174M Replicability, Reproducibility Initiatives - an expensive push for something that seems fairly agreeable on the surface, though how any of the four initiatives will be implemented, or will have sustained impact on the scientific field is TBD.

- The Bad -

Trump and DOGE caused irreparable harm to scientific progress  

The American Society of Naturalists released the results of a survey, Impacts on Science, evaluating the impact of federal policies since January 20, 2025, on scientists working in the fields of ecology, evolution, and marine science.  The survey, a one-year follow-up from an original survey conducted in the summer of 2025, found continued adverse effects of the Trump Administration's actions.  Respondents to the survey cited how federal policies have caused disruptions to research, job losses, scientific censorship, uncertainty, declines in efficiency, loss of institutional knowledge, barriers to international collaboration, and more.  Of note, 52.4% felt that the impact on their field was extremely negative, and 25% felt that the harm done to their area of science is already irreparable.

Total awards made for scientific research continue to drop

Despite appropriations that gave NIH a slightly larger budget in 2026 than 2025, fewer new awards have been made in fiscal year 2026 (FY26), bringing the total number of NIH awards made in FY26 to a six-year low.  This means that taxpayer dollars are going to fewer projects, fewer people, and fewer new ideas.  Although the NIH has claimed that its new funding strategy should be beneficial to early stage investigators and to institutions in states that have historically received less funding, the actual numbers indicate that these groups received no benefit in FY26.  In addition, recent analysis shows that investigators from marginalized communities suffered the steepest decline in NIH funding.  Similarly, NSF funded fewer total awards as well as allocating a lower than usual proportion of their two year appropriation in FY26, apparently reserving $1.4 M for Trump-backed initiatives in FY27.

Health and Human Services (HHS) proposes changes to the “Common Rule”

HHS is proposing revisions to 45 CFR part 46, the part of federal regulations that standardizes and codifies required protections for participants in research studies. This provision is known as the Common Rule, and composes the baseline ethical standards to which all government-funded research in the United States must be held. It was first implemented in 1991 and revised in 2017 (effective January 2019) and governs how researchers obtain informed consent from participants, share data, and provide special protections for vulnerable participants such as prisoners or pregnant people.  The administration claims that these changes will reduce burden and ambiguity for investigators, institutional review boards, and research institutions.  While some of those changes would be welcome, details about the exact changes proposed, the process, and the timing remain unclear.  A recent article in the journal Science reports that some aspects of the Common Rule have been considered burdensome and can be confusing for investigators and review boards, especially when making minor changes to existing protocols. However, they also report concern from scientists about the deregulatory aspect of the proposed changes and questions about whether this change might weaken protections for human research subjects.

More Bad News:

- The Ugly -

NIH continues to withdraw from funding research on the health effects of public policy  

An article published Thursday in Health Affairs Forefront addresses the concern that NIH has been turning away grant applications whose aim is to inform policy makers.  While no formal policy change has been published, NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya has been publicly stating that research informing policy is not relevant to the NIH mission.  However, many government-implemented policies have stark influences on health, beyond that attributable to understanding and treating diseases.  Such policies range from regulation of health care, pharmaceuticals, environmental quality, or infectious disease control to housing, education, food, transportation, labor markets, taxation, and social welfare programs.  Evidence-based data from rigorously conducted research remains critical for optimal development and regulation of policies.  The authors of the Health Affairs Forefront article, which include a former NIH Institute Director, argue that policy considerations are a legitimate and essential topic for biomedical research.  They conclude “understanding the health consequences of policy is not peripheral to NIH’s mission.  It is central to it.” 

CDC staff is down thirty percent

A devastating article in The New York Times this week describes a “zombiefied” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  The CDC workforce is down 30% since the start of the Trump administration, first from Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts and then from resignations by public health officials too disgusted by the HHS leadership to remain on the job.  The article states that “the changes have hindered the CDC’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season.”  Many had high hopes for the new CDC director Erica Schwartz, but she seems unable, or unwilling, to challenge her boss, RFK Jr.  The article concludes that “after a year and a half in the cross hairs of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s drive to remake public health policy, the agency is a skeleton of the powerhouse it was.”

DOGE cuts impact child with deadly brain tumor 

A casualty of the 2025 cuts initiated by DOGE, the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (PBTC), which supported research on the treatment of primary brain tumors in children, was not able to renew their funding and ran out of money earlier this year.  The PBTC focused on very early-stage clinical trials that were enrolling children with rarer tumors for which there is currently no effective treatment.  As reported by CNBC News, one active protocol that was terminated enrolled children like eight-year-old John Paul Macri, who suffers from a deadly inoperable brain tumor and is now in hospice.  The trial would have used mRNA technology to train the patient’s body to attack cancerous cells.  The current administration has curtailed funding for studies using mRNA technology, a promising technology for treating many cancers as well as preventing viral infections.  The report ends by noting that “in Washington, the uncertainty over funding medical research often focuses on the political fight between the Trump administration and scientists. Now, the impact on patients is starting to become clear.”  While there is no guarantee that the mRNA treatment would have worked for John Paul, now it is too late for him to even get the chance to try; the goal of his family and doctors now is to keep him as comfortable as possible.  “These decisions have very real consequences,” the child’s mother said, “You guys might not have considered how this impacts a little boy named John Paul who is dying.”

More Ugly News:

  • An article in the American Journal of Public Health describes how the COVID pandemic “unleashed a serious and sweeping backlash against public health.”  Many public health officials were subject to harassment, hostility, and threats of violence.  The authors argue that public health officials and health departments “remain at risk for growing and increasingly severe backlash now and in the future.”

  • Last Friday, the United Nations General Assembly discussed a plan for pandemic preparedness, prevention, and response.  CDC Director Erica Schwartz spoke for the United States at the meeting, and stated that the U.S. does not support the plan.

  • According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. used $12 million from the HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH) to cover his own security costs.  OMH was established to address higher Black infant mortality rates.  Kennedy, Jr. has also received gifts and book advances that may be large enough to represent “supplementation of salary,” which is prohibited.

  • The Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) summit was held Tuesday in Washington, DC. A major focus was artificial intelligence (AI). HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said that AI can offer patients “a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country” and has the power to “free us from medical tyranny.” He seemed to imply AI would have given very different answers about controlling the COVID pandemic that would not have included masks, social distancing, or vaccines.

Reflection from the Community

This week we are making Special Counsel Jack Smith an honorary community member in order to include a quote from his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  As a fellow speaker of truth to power, we think he has earned inclusion.

“Public servants have remained faithful to their oaths despite extraordinary pressure.  Fear may be contagious; courage is as well.” 

- Jack Smith

Leadership Watch

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee voted to advance Surgeon General nominee Nicole Saphier to the full Senate for a vote.  In the same vote they advanced Timothy Westlake to be Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, HHS; Mary Lazare to be Assistant Secretary for Aging, HHS; and Loren Sweatt and Douglas Ralph to be Members of the National Mediation Board.

Calls to Action

**NEW Submit a comment about proposed changes to animal studies reporting.

NIH is seeking public input on the feasibility of the proposed changes for reporting live vertebrate animal numbers by species and pain and distress categories.  Comments are due by December 21.

Submit a comment about proposed changes to NIH grant review reporting

NIH is seeking public input on the proposed change to report application categorization as “most competitive,” “competitive,” and “not discussed” in lieu of final overall impact score.  Comments due by October 13.

Submit a comment on proposed policy change on sharing summary results.  This new policy proposal would require summary-level study results from NIH-supported clinical research to be shared with participants of those studies.  NIH is seeking public input on the implementation of this policy.  Responses are due by October 26.

Weigh in on OPM's plan to shrink FEHB plan options.  The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has opened a request for information asking whether it should limit or restructure the health plan choices available through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program.  Currently plans offer three options or two options plus a high-deductible option health plan.  OPM is exploring whether to change the number or the types of health plans that will be offered.  If you're a federal employee or in a fed family, please comment about what you do or don't like about the current FEHB system.  Comments are due by November 16.  

Ask that your current institution or alma mater commit to America’s Compact for Higher Education.  This is a declaration of academic freedom that commits to the pursuit of knowledge and the use of that knowledge for public good even in the face of political pressure to the contrary. 

Upcoming Events

27 UNIHTED / NIH community events

  • Weekly NIH Vigil every Saturday at 10:00 am.

    • No Kings Vigil, October 17:  Join us for a special Vigil as a part of the “No Kings Vote Early—America Belongs to the People” event!

  • Weekly peer empowerment call every Thursday at 6:00 pm.

  • Listen to Jennifer Troyer, Sylvia Chou, Mollie Manier, and David Sommers discuss peer review on WCOM Tuesday October 6 at 1:00.  The show is hosted by former NIH Program Officer, Larry Solomon.

Community Events

  • Dr. Kristian Andersen presents “On Viral Emergence and the Origins of Pandemics,” Tuesday, October 6, 2 pm, Building 40, NIH campus.  Those without campus access who wish to attend, contact Lee Eiden for information on registering as a guest.

  • Crow’s Nest Baltimore is showing “22 Federal Workers”: a virtual exhibition of oil portraits by NIHer and artist “Paint Brains” honoring federal workers and their public-service contributions.  On display online through October 10. 

Wellness Weekly

Our somewhat serious community recommendations for self-care are:

  • Pack yourself a picnic and go eat somewhere beautiful and new

  • Blow bubbles

  • Tell someone the absolute truth about why you like them

In solidarity,

27 UNIHTED and NIH Vigils

Cara AB
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27 UNIHTED / NIH Vigils Newsletter 9/27/26