National Health Institutes will no longer allow US scientists to direct their funds to investigate partners abroad, which questions the future of studies on topics, including malaria and childhood cancer.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new NIH director, announced the policy on Thursday, on the same day, Dr. Matthew J. Mempoli, the main deputy director, criticized the thesis of the so -called subaways in an email obtained by the New York Times.
“If you cannot clearly justify why it is something abroad, since it cannot be done elsewhere and benefits the American people,” Dr. Ir. Memoi wrote: “Then the project should be closed.”
The new restrictions, which will also be applied to national subawards in the future, come amid deep reductions in NIH funds and freezing federal subsidies in many higher universities, together with executive orders to remodel the scientific agenda of nations.
On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order that restored a type of experimentation that can make pathogens more dangerous for humans, and ending support the so -called function of function of function in countries like China.
Researchers founded by NIH subsidies have historical subaways to facilitate international collaborations, which are essential for study conditions such as childhood cancer or diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis that do not prevail.
Subawards are legal and financial agreements made between the winners of the subsidy and its partners abroad. The practice is used through the federal government and is not exclusive to the NIH
But it has been criticized in recent years because either reports and monitoring of lax funds. After a critical report from the Government’s responsibility office in 2023, the NIH established stricter monitoring requirements.
The defenders of scientific and medical research said that as science has become more complex and collaborative initiatives that attract participants and scientists around the world they have more criticism.
“Competitive science requires a team approach,” said Dr. E. Anders Kolb, executive director of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. “There is no laboratory, institution or researcher that has all the necessary tools to solve the very complex questions we are doing.”
Many of these studies require a lot of subjects. For example, as scientists can define types of childhood cancers with greater precision, Dr. Ir. Kolb said: “You get more and more in subsets of smaller and smaller diseases.”
“Then, if you want to execute a clinical trial of a new therapy that can benefit thematic children, it could have decades to complete an essay if only Androloll’s children in the United States,” he added. “When we collaborate with our international partners, we can finish thesis tests much faster and bring therapies to children as soon as possible.”
When announcing the new directive, Dr. Bhattacharya cited recent reports from the Government’s Responsibility Office that have criticized the financing granted to international universities and laboratories, as well as companies.
The problems highlighted by Gao’s reports “can lead to a collapse in trust and potentially to the security of the United States biomedical research company,” added Dr. Bhattacharya.
NIH’s expenditure in these international groups is difficult to track, one of the failures observed by the GAO, the Nature magazine, which first reported the new policy, estimated the total of approximately $ 500 million a year.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has NIH funds to study the prevention and treatment of HIV in Kenya and South Africa, a work that will be affected by the new policy.
Researchers such as her must provide detailed information on international sub -Ubdos when they request their subsidies, he said, including the justification for using a foreign entity and for each aspect of the budget.
International partners must now provide access to their laboratory notebooks, data and other documentation at least once a year, said Dr. Gandhi. All expenses are traced in a system called Foreign Awards and Components, or facts, he said.
“It is very rigorous, as should be when you use taxpayers dollars,” said Dr. Gandhi.
“Every year that presents its progress report, it represents every penny that was spent on the foreign site, where it went, how much the tests worked, how much was the payment researchers, every aspect.”
It was not clearly clear how the new policy would be implemented. NIH did not respond to additional information requests.
The NIH will not retroactively stop foreign subawards already in force “at this time” and will continue to make prizes to direct groups to international, said the agency’s statement.
But the new policy will prohibit new competitive awards and non -competitive awards to be reissued if they propose subaubzos to foreign institutions.
“If a project is no longer viable without foreign subaways, Nih will work with the recipient to negotiate a bilateral termination of the project,” said the statement.
The new policy seemed to be somewhat less draconian than the sum presented by Dr. Mempo in his internal email, who threatened immediate action to close or stop international sites.
“Subawards to foreign sites cannot continually,” he wrote. “This has a horrible bone badly for years and has a complete irresponsible legs. We must take immediate measures. If a study in a foreign site, we need to start closing it or find a different way of financing it can track it properly.”
Gao reports that he had criticized several federal departments for Lax reports had required to improve supervision. But the office did not recommend finishing these funds completely.
In 2023, a GAO report reviewed $ 2 million in direct awards and subawards, most NIH, awarded to three Chinese research institutions, including the Wuhan Virology Institute, between 2014 and 2021.
The Institute of Virology received subaways from the University of California, Irvine, and from the non -profit group Ecohealth Alliance. The work of the alliance with Chinese scientists led former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to suspend his funds last year. The Trump administration recently changed the government portal to obtain information about COVID with a website that suggests that the new virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan.
The GAO report said that NIH’s supervision does not always guarantee that foreign institutions meet the biosecurity requirements, including biosecurity requirements.
A reason why the expenses were difficult to trace was due to a federal government policy that required subauavos reports of $ 30,000 or more, according to another GAO report.
This report examined about $ 48 million in NIH funds and the State Department that were allocated to Chinese companies and institutions between 2017 and 2021, including a project to study insects transmitted by insects, such as malaria.
He found that “the total scope of these subaways” is unknown, and that the data were incomplete and, sometimes, inaccurate, because many expenses were exempt from informing.
Support Mandavilli Contributed reports.
