NIH Issues Bethesda Declaration Against Political Cuts
In a rare collective action, over 300 researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have published the Bethesda Declaration. Modeled explicitly after Director Jay Bhattacharya’s controversial Great Barrington Declaration, this letter rebukes politically driven budget cuts and policy changes that threaten U.S. and global biomedical research.
Background and Context
Since January 2025, the Trump administration has terminated 2,100 NIH grants—totaling approximately $9.5 billion—and $2.6 billion in contracts. These moves coincide with layoffs of critical NIH program officers and contract managers who administer peer review and maintain high-performance computing (HPC) clusters used for genomics and AI-driven drug discovery.
The Bethesda Declaration: Key Points
- Politicization of Science — Researchers cite deep, politically motivated cuts that override peer-review priorities.
- Disruption of Global Collaboration — Projects in multi-omics, vaccine research, and pandemic preparedness have stalled as international partners withdraw or lose funding commitments.
- Undermining Review Processes — Termination of scientific review panels in the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) has delayed funding decisions by up to 30 percent.
- Staff Layoffs — More than 150 program officers and grants management specialists have departed, jeopardizing continuity in long-term cohort studies and clinical trial oversight.
Data on Funding Cuts
Analysis of NIH internal dashboards shows that the success rate for R01-equivalent grants has fallen from 21% to 14% since early 2025. Simultaneously, HPC utilization on NIH’s in-house Cray supercomputers and cloud allocations (AWS, Azure) has dropped by 20%, as computational biology centers scramble to reallocate resources.
Implications for Biomedical Research
- Clinical Trials Halted: Over a dozen Phase II oncology trials have paused enrollment due to contract cancellations.
- AI/ML Delays: Machine learning pipelines for imaging and phenotype prediction face stalled preprocessing on NIH Data Commons, impacting over 500 active projects.
- Resource Reprovisioning: Cloud credits awarded under the NIH STRIDES Initiative may go unused as administrative staff departures delay grant amendments.
Expert Opinions and Reactions
We are compelled to speak up when leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.
‘Standing up in this way is a risk, but I am much more worried about the risks of not speaking up,’ said Jenna Norton, program officer at NIDDK.
Former NIH Director Jeremy Berg and over a dozen Nobel laureates have also voiced support, emphasizing that sustained funding underpins breakthroughs in genomics, immunology, and neurodegeneration.
Deeper Analysis
Impact on Computational Biology Infrastructure
The NIH runs two major HPC centers delivering over 15 petaflops of sustained performance. Layoffs have cut operations staff by 25%, stretching maintenance schedules. Computational genomics pipelines now face queue backlogs of 48 hours, up from 12 hours in late 2024.
Peer Review Process Under Strain
The CSR’s Integrated Review Groups (IRGs) rely on subject-matter experts to score applications on a scale of 1.0 to 9.0. With fewer officers to manage panels and recruit reviewers, average turnaround for summary statements has lengthened from 98 to 130 days.
Global Collaboration and Data Sharing
International repositories such as GenBank and GISAID depend on NIH funding for curation and API access. Deferred budgets have forced temporary API throttling, affecting real-time data sharing for pathogen surveillance and meta-analyses.
Looking Ahead: Senate Hearing and 2026 Budget
On June 11, NIH Director Bhattacharya will testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee regarding the proposed 2026 budget, which calls for a 40% reduction from the agency’s $48 billion appropriation. Senators from both parties have signaled bipartisan concern over potential impacts on pandemic readiness and emerging technologies.
Conclusion
The Bethesda Declaration represents a pivotal moment for scientific self-advocacy within federal agencies. Researchers warn that without immediate course correction, the downturn in funding and staff expertise could set back U.S. biomedical innovation by years, if not decades.