While the Trump administration has been holding the medical research financing in recent months, scientists and managers of the National Institutes of Health often wondered how much autonomy the director of the agency, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had.
The Department of Government Efficiency, the characteristic cost -saving project of Elon Musk, has helped to encourage decisions to cancel or postpone research subsidies. Other projects fell victim to President Trump’s face-off with universities over anti-Semitism. But given a chance for a senate panel on Tuesday to dispel suspicions about those who influence the NIH, Dr. Bhattacharya did little to claim ownership of perhaps the rocky period in the many decades of the Bureau of the Financing Research Institutions.
Decisions to freeze subsidy payments to Northwestern University “made it happen before I came into office,” said Dr. Bhattacharya on the Panel, members of the Senate Credit Committee.
He repeatedly said that a proposal to reduce the NIH budget by $ 18 billion – almost 40 percent – “a collaboration between congress and administration” was and refused to talk in detail about how the cuts would influence the agency.
And insisted on an attempt to limit financing at universities for overhead costs for research-a cost-saving movement that is built into the budget proposal of the administration in 2026-Zei Dr. Bhattacharya: “I don’t want to go into it”, stating the continuous court cases.
Several Democrats on the committee said they were confused about who was in the lead at the agency.
“I want to know, who is lagging this financing?” Senator Tammy Baldwin van Wisconsin, a Democrat, demanded proof that the NIH had so far spread billions of dollars this year than in the same period last year. “Is it you? Is it Doge? Is it Omb?” she added, referring to the Office of Management and Budget. “Who makes those decisions?”
Dr. Bhattacharya replied: “There is a series of decisions, I think, who led to some of those breaks of subsidies.” For example, he said that it had been his call to leave what he called ‘politicized science’, a term he used in the past to describe research with regard to diversity and shares. But he said that restrictions on research financing at Harvard and other leading institutions ‘had been together with the administration’.
Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois, another Democrat, responded strongly after Dr. Bhattacharya had denied the responsibility for the frozen investigations of the administration to Northwest.
An e-mail from a NIH officer in mid-April, weeks after the confirmation of Dr. Bhattacharya, employed employees not to complete a subsidy prices to Northwestern and various other universities and not to explain the institutions why their financing was frozen.
“De Bok will stop in your office,” Mr Durbin told Dr. Bhattacharya. “Don’t blame another person.”
The attempt by the Trump government to significantly reduce the expenditure of the office next year, criticized senators from both parties, including senator Susan Collins van Maine, a Republican.
The proposed reduction “is so disturbing,” she told Dr. Bhattacharya. “It would postpone effective treatments and treatments to be developed for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, type 1. diabetes The plans, she said, brought the United States the risk of ‘falling back’.
Dr. Bhattacharya said that the NIH was dedicated to research into Alzheimer’s and other diseases and that he would collaborate with legislators to tackle ‘the health needs of all Americans’.
The director has opened the door for an agreement between the Trump administration and leading universities that would make their medical research financing, although he did not offer any details about the prospects for such an agreement or what would be needed to reach one. “I am very hopeful that a resolution can be made with the universities where those subsidies were paused,” he said.
In recent months, the NIH has abruptly terminated more than 1,300 subsidy prices and delayed the financing for more than 1,000 other projects. On Monday, dozens of NIH employees Signed their names in a letter Said those actions had been taken on the basis of ideological preferences and without scientific personnel input, whereby the research is censored into issues such as health differences, COVID, the health effects of climate change and Sexual health.
Dr. Bhattacharya said on Tuesday that he had set up a process for scientists to appeal. The agency, he said, would appeal to appeals within a few weeks.
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