A group of public health experts and major employment organizations to sue national institutes health (NIH) about what they call a “continuous ideological cleansing” of scientific research.
In a legal complaint, on Wednesday, the American Public Health Association; UNITED Automobile and Aerospace and Agricultural Direction Working (UAW); Other health experts say the National Health Institutes suddenly canceled hundreds of grants since February 2025.
Al -Shakawi says that the cuts targeted the research related to topics such as diversity, fairness and integration (Dei), sexual identity, vaccine frequency and even work that includes collaborators in other countries. They argue that these cancels provide “a window in destruction to medical and scientific research that is playing all over the country now.”
The lawsuit claims that NIH has exploded from the usual science -based review process and began to close projects based on new “mysterious” priorities. It claims that the organization often justifies the cancellation by saying “the research no longer raises the agency’s priorities.”
Among the researchers affected by the discounts are those who study Alzheimer’s disease, healthy variations of pregnancy and HIV prevention. In total, about $ 17 billion, including $ 7.5 billion has already been spent on projects that have now been closed.
“The end of the National Institutes of Health, taxpayers and years of hard work to answer the most urgent vital medical questions in the world. This is an attack on the scientific progress itself,” said Bretani Charlton, the prosecutor and professor of participant at Harvard Second Public Health College in a statement.
“Discoveries and important treatments will be delayed, which endangered lives. Health issues in one society affect everyone, so this is all concerned with us,” Charlton added.
The complaint also describes how, after a wave of executive orders from Donald Trump It aims to eliminate DEI and “sex ideology” programs From the federal government, the National Health Institutes Command began to distribute internal notes that announce employees to identify and stop the grants that have mentioned these topics. But the lawsuit claims that “cleansing critical research projects” exceeded Dei.
“The elimination of the science settled by the peers in the national institutes of health has not stopped in issues that are related to sex or Dei,” as mentioned by the complaint. “The ideological purity directions of the defendants also seek to cancel research that is related to” vaccine frequency “,” Covid “, and studies that include entities located in South Africa and China, among other things.
According to what was reported, the agency prevented funding requests in the middle of the review and cleaning the DEI language from its website.
If these cuts continue, “scientific progress will be delayed, treatments will be discovered, human health will be at risk, and life will be lost,” the lawsuit warns.
“This will have devastating consequences for those who depend on government progress on HIV, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, or other public health challenges, if not reflected by the courts,” said Peter Ji Laurie, the prosecutor and head of the Science Center in the public interest.
