On the Misguided Termination of Virus Research by HHS

The failure of HHS to honor its commitments is bad science and bad policy.

Yesterday March 25, HHS terminated 29 grants awarded by the NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases to institutions and scientists across the United States. The reason? The grants were awarded as part of a pandemic-era initiative in 2022. The ‘pandemic’ is now over – true (in the sense that the public health emergency was declared over in May 2023). But SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses are still circulating in the U.S. and globally. These research programs had been working to improve therapeutics, vaccines, and understanding of viral infection for COVID and a range of other pathogen threats. This post explains why the HHS decision is catastrophically bad science and bad policy. Here are the takeaways:

This is bad science: the ‘pandemic’ is over but COVID-19 and other viruses are still here. Antiviral therapeutics and vaccines are needed for people now & in future.

This is bad policy: it sends a signal that the US is an unreliable support mechanism of research (this is a big big uh oh for science, health, and the economy).

NIH-supported viral research grant? HHS failed to honor its commitments - again.

First off, what was cut:

Science Magazine reported that cuts impacted:

• Two of a series of ‘serological science’ centers. Translation – we lose the ability to understand short- and long-term immune responses to infections. Given the divergent outcomes of infections in COVID, from asymptomatic to severe enough to kill, losing sight of immune responses is scientifically irresponsible.

• Improvements to COVID vaccines, consistent with the anti-vaccination rhetoric of the current Director of HHS.

• Research on long COVID, ironic given that the current Director of HHS claims to be a proponent of research on chronic disease.

• Research to develop anti-viral treatments for COVID and other life-threatening pathogens, including Ebola. This is short-sighted, does it need to be explained?

Individual researchers provided additional context. Michael Lin, a Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, reported the cancellation of his grant to develop antiviral medications that could be used to fight COVID infections. Likewise, Paul Bieniasz, a Professor of Virology at Rockefeller University reported the cancellation of his group’s efforts to develop broadly effective vaccines. These are the kinds of research initiatives that can be translated from the bench to the clinic – but not if grants are cancelled without any thought to the impact on discoveries, careers, and lives.

Why this is bad science

Science is hard. It takes years to develop sufficient fundamental understanding that researchers can begin to make the small number of good choices out of the much larger range of potential (often poor) choices for each experiment, model, and manipulation. Science builds upon prior work. We face a vast unknown, far larger than the known. But each step and discovery brings new frontiers that were once farther away into view.

In the case of COVID, the development of life-saving vaccines in less than a year after the first sequence of the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was made available in January 2020 is a miracle – a miracle made possible by decades of research to understand the foundations and translation potential of mRNA-based vaccines.

Scaling up from a sequence to a safe and effective vaccine produced in the billions, enabled in part by Operation Warp Speed, is not something we can just turn on and off. Halting the science of immunology, therapeutics, vaccines, and infection biology represents a misguided mix of hubris and grievance. The ‘pandemic’ may be over, but COVID is not eliminated. COVID, influenza, measles and other viral pathogens are circulating in the US and globally. These endemic diseases continue to cause infections. New emerging pathogens will come. Stopping research now means we will fall behind in the race for the next cure, prevention, diagnosis, and personalized care.

Why this is bad policy

The U.S. is now doing what those of us committed to careers in science once thought impossible: it is reneging on commitments. It is ripping up agreements without cause. It is one thing for HHS to declare that ongoing commitments will be honored but that they are embarking on a process to shift priorities as part of future funding cycles. This kind of rational planning can have positive effects – energizing scientific communities to contribute to a visioning process of what could be. This is different.

The message here should be read loud and clear within and outside the U.S. Under the current administration, winning a 5 year research award involving interdisciplinary teams of scientists that take years of data and months to write and must compete with hundreds of other groups nationwide is no longer a guarantee of 5 years of funding. The government will – if it can get away with it – not honor its commitments. It won’t pay, even when there is a negotiated grant award stating the duration and conditions & even when the researchers have gone above and beyond to perform the highest quality science. Because for this administration the science doesn’t matter.

Research doesn’t run on whim or weekly news cycles. It is hard, requires expertise, and takes years of dedication. This is hardly the first set of grant cancellations made by this administration for reasons unrelated to performance. With each failure to honor contracts, the White House is sending a signal that they can and will politicize science. But politicized science leads to junk science and junk science leads to junk cures and junk cures leads to bad outcomes (example: taking Vitamin A instead of getting vaccinated does not prevent measles and can lead to severe consequences, including liver damage).

Believe them when they say what they want to do.

These cancellations continue the path the Trump administration seems committed to follow: dismantling American leadership in science. They told us they would do it and we need to start believing them when they say what they want to do. As a reminder, on February 13, the White House issued an executive order related to HHS priorities. The order contained the following key clause

the National Institutes of Health and other health-related research funded by the Federal Government should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick;

This might seem anodyne – it is not. The phrase ‘prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes’ of illness is code for prioritizing alternative cures, supplements, and other preoccupations of the incoming HHS Director unrelated to the advice and priorities of experts. It also suggests that the White House intends to downgrade research on infectious disease - they did precisely that today.

In the eyes of this administration, the quality of the researcher doesn’t matter. They will not honor grants and contracts. They will shut down life-saving research already en route from the lab to the clinic if they view it as politically expedient.

We should ask ourselves: is this the best version of America science, innovation, and discovery? And then we should ask our representatives: what are they doing to ensure that the executive branch does not destroy what took decades to build and impacts people and the economy in communities nationwide?