SUMMARYThe White House is drafting an executive order that would give Russell Vought veto power over every National Institutes of Health grant. The NIH funds about $47 billion in biomedical research each year, supporting university researchers, basic biology studies, clinical trials, and the broader biotechnology sector. The move follows a contentious internal fight involving NIH director Jay Bhattacharya and the Office of Management and Budget.
On Friday, The Washington Post reported on a contentious White House meeting in which the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jay Bhattacharya, tried to fend off yet another effort to place funding decisions under political control. The move came from Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has sought to limit and control research funds. The Post suggested that Bhattacharya ended up on the losing side of the fight.
This initial leak has been confirmed and expanded on by outlets such as The New York Times and Politico. It now appears that the administration is drafting an executive order that would give Vought veto power over every individual grant awarded by the NIH.
If at first you don't succeed
The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research on the planet, and its $47 billion budget is larger than that of the next 10 research funders combined. Its funding, distributed largely through grants to academic researchers at universities, supports everything from basic biological research to clinical trials and has helped the biotechnology industry flourish.