Massive NIH funding cut and reorganization proposed in leaked documents

https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-proposes-massive-nih-budget-cut-and-reorganization

President Donald Trump’s administration wants to cut nearly in half the $47 billion budget of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and reorganize the agency’s 27 institutes and centers into just eight institutes, according to a leaked version of a near-final 2026 budget proposal obtained by Science. That plan, however, must pass muster with Congress—historically a strong bipartisan supporter of the agency—if it is to become reality.

The administration’s proposal, which was first reported by Inside Medicine and The Washington Post, would slash NIH’s budget by 44%, to $26.7 billion, in the 2026 fiscal year, which begins in October. It also calls for eliminating four of NIH’s institutes and centers, but leaves the agency’s cancer, aging, and infectious diseases institutes alone. The rest would be consolidated or relocated.

The abolished institutes focus on nursing research, alternative medicine, minority health, and global health research. Fifteen of the remaining 20 institutes would find homes in five new institutes, dealing with “body systems,” neuroscience, general medical science, disability, and behavioral health. NIH’s new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, created in 2011 to speed therapies from preclinical research to patients, would be moved outside NIH. Both would land in the office of a new assistant secretary for innovation in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent department….

NIH’s environmental health institute, which is the only institute or center located outside the Washington, D.C., area, would move under the $19.8 billion Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) agency being created by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr….

The White House proposal would similarly crater the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reducing it from $9.2 billion to $5.2 billion, a 43% cut. The request calls for eliminating the lion’s share of CDC’s non–infectious disease functions…

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, says the proposed CDC cuts, in combination with the reorganization of some agency functions into the AHA, will “totally destroy the nation’s public health infrastructure.”…

After the public health response to COVID, I think that destroying the US’ public health infrastructure might be the best way to improve the health of Americans in future. I did not hear a single major public health voice ever complain about the harmful measures they imposed, with no scientific justification nor logic. [I did hear some complain when they were made to code gun shot wounds as COVID deaths.]

I think these cuts will be a shock to the system, will show everyone involved, both bureaucrats, researchers and others in the field that business as usual is over. You either do useful, thoughtful, societally beneficial work or get lost. The US taxpayer has funded a great deal of scientific research and has very little to show for it over the past 4 decades. Where were the scientists when the COVID narratives were being enforced? If they can’t be bothered to tell the truth during a pandemic, what ARE they good for?