In Brief
Register Now for the 2024 Rally for Medical Research
Register now and join the Biophysical Society (BPS), and more than 300 national STEM organizations and professionals, at the 2024 Rally for Medical Research in Washington, DC. The Rally, scheduled for September 18-19, is an opportunity to advocate for significant, long-term, sustainable funding increases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). While the NIH has seen continued increases in funding since fiscal year (FY) 2016, funding for FY25 is being challenged by the terms of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) agreement to reduce spending and ongoing partisan animosity toward the agency under current and former leadership.
BPS is calling on you, the researchers in the lab, to join us in Washington, DC on September 19 to urge Congress not to undo decades of investment into the NIH and essential basic and biomedical research. Register Now!
The Fight for NIH and Scientific Research Funding is Underway
The House of Representatives has released preliminary spending bills for fiscal year 2025 leveling damaging prospects for scientific research. The National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) budget would rise only slightly to $9.6 billion after crashing this year. And the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would face a flat budget at $48 billion, a drastic overhaul of its structure, and a ban on so-called gain-of-function (GOF) research.
The bill also includes a plan released 2 weeks ago by the House commerce committee to collapse NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into 15 institutes. Among other changes, the 2-year-old Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, an independent agency within NIH, would be folded into a new NIH institute along with several other institutes and programs. Its current $1.5 billion budget would be cut to $500 million, with the $1 billion distributed across other institutes.
House Floats Plan to Restructure NIH, Limit Gain of Function Research
Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R–WA), chair of the commerce committee, and Robert Aderholt (R–AL), chair of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the National institutes of Health (NIH) have released a new plan to streamline the agency make it more transparent, and curb potentially risky pathogen research, among other reforms. The plan comes in response to what Rodgers and Aderholt suggest are long-running criticisms of NIH’s structure.
Rodgers’s proposal contains a mix of familiar and new ideas, including shrinking the 27 to just 15 using a more “holistic” approach. While some reconfigurations have a logical approach, such as merging neurological, eye, and dental and craniofacial research institutes into a single neuroscience and brain research institute. Others could be more detrimental to specific areas of research, such as putting five institutes, including minority health, nursing, and the Fogarty International Center into a National Institute on Health Sciences Research. Another proposed change would split the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) into two parts: an infectious disease institute and one focusing on the immune system and arthritis. The move appears to be a response to concerns from Republicans that Anthony Fauci, who led NIAID for 38 years, held too much power. All NIH institute directors would be limited to two 5-year terms, an idea proposed previously by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
BPS, alongside our coalition partners in the scientific community are working to oppose efforts to restructure NIH and we will continue to monitor and update members on these proposals.