The National Institutes of Health will no longer allow American scientists to address its financing to research partners abroad, where doubts are being made about the future of studies on test subjects, including malaria and child cancer.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the NIH, announced the policy on Thursday, on the same day, Dr. Matthew J. Memoli, the head of deputy director, shot these so-called subawards in an e-mail obtained by the New York Times.
“If you cannot clearly justify why you are doing something abroad, because it may not be done anywhere else and it will benefit the American people,” Dr. wrote. Memoli, “Then the project must be closed.”
The new restrictions, which also apply to domestic subawards in the future, will be amazed in the midst of deep reductions in nih financing and the freezing of federal fairs at many top universities, together with executive orders who want to reform the scientific agenda of the nation.
On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order that a Type of experiments that can make pathogens more dangerous To people and ending support for the so-called profit-function research in countries such as China.
Researchers funded by NIH subsidies have used historically subordinates to facilitate international collaborations, which are essential for studying conditions such as child cancer or diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis that do not occur in the United States.
The Subawards are legal and financial agreements between the subsidy recipients And their overseas partners. The practice is used in the federal government and is not unique for the NIH
But it has come under fire in recent years because of lax reporting and following funds. After a critical report from the Government Accountability Office in 2023, the NIH stated stricter monitoring requirements.
Proponents of scientific and medical research said that as the science has become more complex, cooperation initiatives that attract participants and scientists from all over the world.
“Competitive science requires a team approach,” said Dr. E. Anders Kolb, Chief Executive of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. “There is no laboratory or institution or researcher who has all the tools needed to resolve the very complex questions we ask.”
Many of these studies require a large number of topics. For example, because scientists are able to more accurately define types of childhood cancer, Dr. Kolb: “You come in smaller and smaller subsets of diseases.”
“So if you want to perform a clinical test with a new therapy that can benefit those children, it can take decades to complete a test if you only register children in the US,” he added. “When we collaborate with our international partners, we can finish these tests much faster and get the therapies for children as quickly as possible.”
With the announcement of the new guideline, Dr. Bhattacharya recent reports from the government accountability office that were critical of financing that were given at international universities and laboratories, as well as companies.
The issues that are emphasized by GAO reports “can lead to a breakdown in trust and possibly the safety of the American biomedical research company,” Dr. Bhatacharya.
NIH expenditure for these international groups are difficult to follow, one of the mistakes noted by GAO the magazine Nature, which reported the new policy for the first time, the total estimated About $ 500 million A year.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has NIH financing to study HIV prevention and treatment in Kenya and South Africa, work that will be affected by the new policy.
Researchers as they must provide detailed information about international subawards When they request their subsidies, she said, including justifications for the use of a foreign entity and for each aspect of the budget.
International partners must now offer access to their laboratory books, data and other documentation at least once a year, Dr. Gandhi on. All expenses are followed on a system called the Foreign Award and Component Tracking SystemOr facts, she said.
“It is very rigorous, as it should be when you use taxpayer dollars,” Dr. Gandhi.
“Every year When you use your progress report, you take into account every cent that was spent on the foreign site – where it went, how much to lab tests, how much was paid researchers, each aspect.”
It was not immediately clear how the new policy would be implemented. The NIH did not respond to requests for additional information.
The NIH will not stop the foreign subawards retroactively that are “already” at the moment and will continue to do it directly to international groups, according to the statement of the agency.
But the new policy will prohibit new competitive prices and non -competitive prices to be re -spent again if they present subawards to foreign institutions.
“If a project is no longer viable without the foreign subawards, NIH will collaborate with the recipient to negotiate a bilateral termination of the project,” said the statement.
The new policy seemed to be a little less draconic than the summons of Dr. Memoli in his internal e -mail, who threatened to close or pause immediate action.
“Subawards on foreign sites cannot continue,” he wrote. “This has been terribly incorrectly managed for years and it has been completely irresponsible. We must take immediate action. If a study has a foreign site, we must begin to conclude it or find another way to finance it that can be followed well.”
GAO reports that the criticized various federal departments for LAX report had called for improving supervision. But the office has not recommended to fully terminate such financing.
In 2023, a GAO report assessed $ 2 million at direct prices and subawardsMost of the NIH, given to three Chinese research institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, between 2014 and 2021.
The Virology Institute received subawards from the University of California, Irvine and from the Non -Profit Group EcoHealth Alliance. The work of the Alliance with Chinese scientists Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. To suspend his financing last year. The Trump administration recently changed the Government Portal for COVID information with a Website that suggests that the new virus was created in a laboratory in Wuhan.
The GAO report said that NIH supervision did not always ensure that the foreign institutions met the conditions, including bio -safety requirements.
One reason why the expenditure was difficult to follow was because of a federal government policy that only had to report $ 30,000 or more, according to another GAO report.
That report investigated around $ 48 million in the financing of NIH and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that went to Chinese companies and research institutions between 2017 and 2021, including one project to study diseases that are transferred by insects, such as malaria.
It discovered that “the full size of these subawards is unknown”, and that data was incomplete and sometimes inaccurate, because so many expenditures were exempt from reporting.
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