Nearly five years ago, Jay Bhattacharya, then a Stanford professor, was part of a trio that published an open letter calling for less stringent public health protections against the Covid pandemic. They called it the Great Barrington Declaration, and its opposition to vaccine mandates and school closings thrust him into the public eye. He became a frequent commentator on the pandemic, an adviser to conservative lawmakers, and eventually the leader of the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research.
Now, several hundred of his employees at the National Institutes of Health have written their own declaration to rebuke many of the agency’s actions over the course of President Trump’s second term. Called the “Bethesda Declaration,” referencing the location of the agency’s Maryland headquarters, it expresses concern over the cancellation of research on health disparities, climate change, and LGBTQ+ people; the proposed cut to funding for research indirect costs; and the firing of “essential” NIH employees, among other moves.
“We modeled this after the Great Barrington declaration because we want Jay Bhattacharya to see himself in this letter. He’s called for academic freedom and a culture of dissent. If he’s the person that he claims to be, I think he has to listen to us, and so I hope he’s the person he claims to be, and that we can work together to be thoughtful about creating policies that achieve the goal of of making America healthy while not imposing risks on our research participants and the public,” said Jenna Norton, a program officer at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, who signed onto the letter.
The letter was signed by 336 people from across the NIH’s institutes and centers, with 93 openly using their name and another 243 signing on anonymously. The letter’s organizers allowed people employed by the NIH as of Jan. 20 to sign; 258 of the signers are currently employed by the agency. “We dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste our public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe,” they begin the letter.
The authors said it is both an effort to try to better inform the public about the effect recent changes at the NIH will have and to organize NIH employees to have a dialogue with the new administration. It is accompanied by a letter of support from high-profile members of the scientific community, organized by the science advocacy group Stand Up for Science. That letter includes signatures from 19 Nobel laureates, former NIH institute directors Jeremy Berg and Joshua Gordon, and Alondra Nelson, a former White House Office of Science and Technology Policy acting director, among others.
“The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international collaboration. Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to succeed,” said Bhattacharya, who was emailed a copy of the letter Monday morning, in a statement.
In a little more than four months, the Trump administration has overseen sweeping changes to the massive agency, bending its research portfolio away from topics it deems taboo, using its research dollars as a cudgel to pressure private universities, and attempting to make more of its functions subject to political priorities. The pace of change caught NIH employees off guard, leaving many shocked, the letter’s authors said.
“It was very stressful, receiving a lot of very distressing information. I think it was day one or day two, like January 20, they asked for a list of probationary employees. So I was afraid that I was going to lose my job from the get-go,” said Anna Culbertson, who was a program specialist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases before being caught up in the mass layoffs on Valentine’s Day and who signed the letter.
Along with the stress of being tasked with terminating grants and pausing research within the NIH, Culbertson said she anxiously watched the steady issuing of executive orders, trying to figure out what they could mean for the agency. “For me, it was like, ‘What is the worst possible way that this executive order can be interpreted?’ Then we’ve seen it play out, in some of that,” she said.
Bhattacharya and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have frequently minimized the effect of the moves at the NIH. Bhattacharya has said that the Trump administration’s policy on diversity, equity, and inclusion is “misunderstood” and Kennedy has asserted in a congressional hearing that no working scientists have been let go from the agency.
Norton finds these messages “deeply concerning. It’s not aligned with what I am seeing on the ground as a program officer. I don’t know if they themselves are misinformed and believe they are speaking the truth, or if they know what’s going on, and they’re directly lying to the American public. Those are the two options, and neither of them speaks well of their leadership.”
Norton said the letter emerged over the past several weeks, as NIH employees have made concerted efforts to support each other and communicate about the rapidly changing ecosystem. Frustrated with various policy changes, someone in a group chat asked where NIH leadership had gone — and why they weren’t standing up.
“And it was pointed out that some of our leadership had stood up. Larry Tabak stood up. Mike Lauer stood up. Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable stood up. Shannon Zenk stood up. Diana Bianchi stood up. They were all resigned. That’s the term I’m using, because they did not choose to resign,” she said, referencing the choice the administration offered several NIH leaders: to be terminated or to be transferred to the Indian Health Service. ”My understanding is that a few of them actually followed up to get more information on the jobs, and were not given any information. So they were effectively fired. Though, on paper, they resigned.”
“When you have that happen,” she added, “it’s going to make the leadership very afraid to speak up. It occurred to us that we needed a way to speak up together at the same time, because we think that there is some safety in numbers.”
Still, she and the other signees of the letter don’t know what will come of it. Some are worried about their jobs, others expressed concerns about being doxxed and subjected to online harassment.
“I’m terrified,” Norton said, when asked if she was worried she could be fired. “But, you know, there’s a book that I read to my kids that talks about the fact that you can’t be brave if you’re not scared.”
This story has been updated with comment from NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.