STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Federal agencies in turmoil under the Trump administration include the National Institutes of Health. NPR health correspondent Rob Stein is tracking the world's leading public funder of biomedical research. Rob, good morning.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK, so how has the NIH been affected?
STEIN: Well, at the moment, there's just a lot of confusion, anxiety and, I'd say, fear. The scientists and doctors on the sprawling campus just outside Washington have been under a blackout of most communications like other health agencies. But we do know that a ban had been imposed on travel, forcing cancellation of some important meetings about what to fund next to fight diseases like, you know, cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Most NIH scientists I reached out to are still afraid to speak publicly. One exception is Haley Chatelaine. She's a young researcher looking at basic cellular functions who helps bargain for the union representing 5,000 NIH fellows.
HALEY CHATELAINE: It's a huge deal. Science moves at breakneck speeds and requires that all of us in the scientific community work together. Any gap that we experience sets us back in terms of being able to conduct the cutting-edge biomedical research that Americans need to stay healthy.
STEIN: Now, the NIH released a statement last night saying the communications blackout has started to lift a little, and some meetings and travel are resuming. So some things seem to be easing up.
INSKEEP: OK, what things are not easing up?
STEIN: Well, there's still a hiring freeze, a prohibition on starting any new research projects on the NIH's campus, and a pause on recruiting new patients for any clinical studies at the NIH. Marjorie Levinstein's another postdoctoral fellow at NIH with the union. She studies addiction, among other things, and says she had to put aside a big step in her research.
MARJORIE LEVINSTEIN: It's incredibly frustrating. It's really harming our ability to make huge medical breakthroughs.
STEIN: Now, the NIH spends most of the agency's nearly $48 billion annual budget on funding tens of thousands of researchers outside the agency. You know, at universities, hospitals, and medical centers. So far, the NIH funding spigot appears to remain open, but there's still worries about the future. So some institutions have started tightening their belts.
INSKEEP: As I'm listening, Rob, I'm thinking about the debate over USAID Agency for International Development.
STEIN: Yeah.
INSKEEP: Some people have been outraged and said this is illegal what's happening. Other people have said, actually, I have a critique of this agency. So how are people responding to the concerns about NIH?
STEIN: You know, Steve, even the NIH's biggest fans say the agency is far from perfect. You know, some changes have been under consideration for a while, like making, you know, the grant review process better. But the main feeling I'm hearing now is a sense of foreboding.
I talked with Dr. Harold Varmus at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He ran the NIH for six years in the 1990s.
HAROLD VARMUS: There's been a general theme to Mr. Trump's ascension to the presidency that this new administration is going to be somehow waging war on the health agencies, and it's going to have a tremendously detrimental effect on health sciences. All of these are terrible signs that we need to be confronting vigorously.
INSKEEP: Rob, I'm just going to note the administration's leadership for health is not yet in place, although he's nominated two critics of the NIH.
STEIN: Yeah, that's absolutely right. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is under consideration to take over the HHS - the Health and Human Services Department - which oversees the NIH. And Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford researcher who was critical of the NIH during the pandemic, is Trump's pick to take over as the next NIH director. His confirmation hearing hasn't been scheduled quite yet. So all in all, there's just a lot of uncertainty and apprehension right now about the future of the NIH.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Rob Stein. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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