NIH cuts to foreign funding more sweeping than publicly announced

Megan Molteni studies on discoveries from the frontiers of genomic medication, neuroscience, and reproductive tech. She joined STAT in 2021 after protecting well being and science at WIRED. You may attain Megan on Sign at mmolteni.13.

A Nationwide Institutes of Well being coverage change on funding of overseas scientists is much extra sweeping than described in a Thursday announcement, in accordance with an inside e mail that signifies worldwide medical trials and different analysis will probably be strictly vetted going ahead.

The company stated Thursday that it’ll not renew or difficulty new “overseas subawards” — NIH funds {that a} U.S. researcher may give to a collaborator abroad to assist full a undertaking — because the company seeks to overtake its $47 billion biomedical analysis portfolio. In a press release, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya stated that this freeze on overseas subawards, whereas the company establishes a brand new system for awarding grants to worldwide collaborators over the following six months, is meant to handle nationwide safety considerations and an absence of transparency in how NIH {dollars} are spent.

However privately, NIH management is making it clear that the strikes are a part of a broader America First agenda that seeks to dramatically scale back U.S. participation in worldwide science.