Trump team removes senior NIH chiefs in shock move
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Hi, Benjamin from The Nature Podcast here. We've been covering the current situation that science is facing in the US in the wake of President Trump's election. And as we've said, there's a lot going on in this space right now. In fact, a lot happened this week as we were putting the regular podcast to bed. So to get us up to speed in this podcast extra, I'm joined by Nature's Max Kozlov, who's been following all the developments.

Max, thank you as ever for joining me. Happy to be here. So this week, you've been reporting once again on everything that's been going on at the NIH, the US National Institutes of Health. Of course, the biggest funder of medical research in the world.

And there have been some big leadership changes at institutes that make up the NIH. Yeah, exactly. So the NIH is made up of 27 institutes and centres, for example, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and

Four of those institute heads were placed on administrative leave this week, and some were offered reassignment to Alaska, Montana, Oklahoma, elsewhere in the country as part of the Indian Health Service. So...

Clearly, they have essentially removed these folks from their positions. And that is unprecedented because these are career officials. These are not political appointees. And nothing like this has ever happened before.

where multiple institute directors are reassigned or removed from their posts like this. So this isn't part of the sort of natural churn that you might expect when a new presidential administration comes in. This is something unseen before. Exactly. And these institute directors oversee billions of dollars of research each. They're kind of the figureheads

figureheads and they're chosen by the scientific community to represent and to lead research in that field. And people noticed that the four institute directors they removed from their posts, they all fund a disproportionate amount of the research that the administration has deemed

unworthy or unscientific or that they've been targeting. So that is research about gender ideology, research about COVID-19, about vaccine hesitancy, about quote unquote transgender issues.

So it's not clear exactly why these institute directors were targeted. They're part of this much broader restructuring of the entire health department, where nearly a quarter of the staff have now been reintegrated.

laid off or terminated in some capacity. But it's certainly a worrying sign that the administration intends to continue to exert its influence over science in the United States. And which institutes are these then, Max, that have seen their directors removed from their posts? So it's the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was previously headed up by Anthony Fauci. So this was his replacement institution.

In addition, it's the National Institute of Minority Health and Disparities, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. And a few weeks prior, the National Human Genome Research Institute, that head was also, uh,

And have we heard from them at all? Any statements from them about their change in circumstance? Not that I've heard yet. Certainly there's been tremendous outcry from the scientific community. One researcher I spoke to, Michael Osterholm, who's an infectious disease epidemiologist, did not mince words. He said that this would go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history. Right, not mincing his words, as you say. Right.

But what about the administration? What have they said about this? Well, we sent over a list of questions to both the NIH and its parent organization, the health department. And I did get back a statement after we published the story, basically saying that the secretary, secretary,

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cares deeply about Indian health and indigenous health and that these leaders would be best served in those roles if they so choose to accept their reassignment. They offered no further comment. And with these changes in place then, do we have any idea of what happens to these individuals?

I imagine that many of them are sort of semi-autonomous, arm's length entities. So what happens now? So the institute directors will be chosen by the NIH director who had his first day

when all of this went down. So he, with consultation with the secretary, RFK Jr., will appoint the next institute directors who are likely to be more sympathetic to the administration's priorities. In addition to that, though, as I report in my story, it's not just these institute directors that were sacked. I mean, there were

about 1,200, 1,300 employees across NIH that were laid off of the about 20,000-person workforce. And that is a significant number. A lot of these staff were in communications, in policy, in budgeting, in IT, in purchasing and contracts, which might seem trivial, but they're absolutely essential to the work that NIH does.

I've already heard stories of scientists who work at NIH being unable to purchase anything, and they were already unable to purchase things because of other restrictions the Trump administration had imposed on them. But this is yet another burden because now the person, the people who are responsible for this are gone. And so I think the NIH and the health department at large has been taking stock of

of the layoffs because they were extensive. Multiple outlets have called them a bloodbath and trying to figure out where we go from here, I don't think that the answer is fully clear yet. And so the chiefs of five, I guess, of these institutes have been removed. Of course, the NIH is made up of many, many more, as you've said. Are there expectations that more could follow? There could certainly be more that follow.

I think there was a rumor that was circulated that all 27 Institute directors would be removed in the last couple months. So far, that hasn't come to pass. But the fact that even a snippet of that has come true is...

shocking to many again because this is all just unprecedented and so this hollowing out of institutes at different levels then is this going to have immediate short-term impacts or are researchers expecting to see more of a tail do you think

Well, I think the function of NIH has already been severely limited by the administration's actions so far in reviewing studies and getting money out the door. And so I think that this will even further hinder the agency's ability to go about its mission to research and improve the

health of Americans. In addition, the extensive cuts throughout the health department, including at CDC, will have a direct impact on the ability of the government to even monitor the health of its own people in trying to get HIV care to those who need it.

and to prevent further outbreaks from happening. I don't think that this is an exaggeration, given the extensive cuts and how entire offices at CDC and

the health department have been cut. Well, let's do one more story then, Max. And this is something you've been looking into and something that we've spoken about a few times in the last couple of catch-ups we've done. And it's about the administration cutting funding for research to improve the health and lives of transgender people. What's been going on here recently? So the Trump administration has cut

all federal funds, including NIH research grants to understand and improve the health of transgender people. And so now there's virtually no...

left in this field, but I got wind, thanks to an email that I reviewed, of new research the administration would like to fund in this field, but it's quite specific what they would like to look at, and specifically to study regret and detransition following social transition and chemical and surgical mutilation of children and adults, which

So what they're referring to here is gender affirming surgery, and they're using this language that scientists say is absolutely unscientific. And it's quite specific, the focus to study regret and detransition. So this is people who get gender affirming surgery and decide or realize later on maybe that they

regret doing that. This has been a big talking point among the Trump administration, but the published research on this, some of the estimates are as low as 1% or even less of the people who get this kind of surgery go on to regret it. And that's actually nothing compared to the number of about 14% of people who regret

So this language, which a lot of people would describe as polarizing, is being used potentially, what, to try and tempt researchers into looking into this?

So in general, the White House does often set its own priorities or direct the NIH to study certain topics. For example, under Biden, he really wanted to do a lot of research about cancer, especially with the death of his own son to the disease, or looking at research into women's health. But

But this directive that I've seen is unusual in its specificity, its use of this unscientific language and focus on a hyper polarizing topic. Those are the big things that folks inside the agency say is unusual about this request.

And I think it's especially concerning to researchers because it's one thing to say we want more research on cancer, but the agency has never been in a position because it doesn't do this where it terminates all the grants in the field and then says,

okay, but here are the things that we want to research. So what they've done here is they've essentially replaced all of the research in the field with its own priorities, its own questions. And that, researchers say, is a huge breach of independence and academic freedom. And one can imagine a situation where if these grants are offered, researchers won't be clamoring to take

take this money? I think that's definitely a possibility, especially using language such as surgical and chemical mutilation. That's such charged language. It's language actually, in fact, the scientific community would say is harmful to transgender people because it's stigmatizing. Hmm.

Well, we're going to leave it there for this update. Listeners, if you are working in this sphere and there is something that you think we should be aware of, there are ways to contact nature confidentially. If you head over to the show notes, you'll find a link on where you can do that. But for the time being, Max Kozlov, thank you so much for joining me. Of course. Thanks.

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