Hundreds of current and former staff at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have authored and signed the “Bethesda Declaration,” a public call to NIH and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership to reverse recent policies they say undermine scientific excellence, academic freedom, and the very mission of the NIH.

The Bethesda Declaration is an open letter, signed on June 9, 2025, by NIH employees from every institute and center, as well as a broad coalition of academic and scientific leaders, including numerous Nobel laureates. The declaration expresses deep concern over what the signatories describe as politically motivated interference in NIH operations, including the abrupt termination of grants, disruption of global scientific collaborations, and the undermining of independent peer review.

The declaration outlines five main grievances with recent NIH and HHS actions:

• Politicization of Research Funding: The signatories allege that the NIH has terminated or frozen high-quality, peer-reviewed grants and contracts based on political ideology, not scientific merit. This includes research on health disparities, COVID-19, climate change, gender identity, sexual health, and broad participation in biomedical research. Since January 2025, they report that 2,100 grants totaling $9.5 billion and $2.6 billion in contracts have been terminated, wasting years of work and undermining participant trust.
• Disruption of Global Collaboration: The declaration criticizes the dissolution of foreign research collaborations, warning that this isolates American scientists from critical international expertise and technologies, and slows scientific progress.
• Undermining Peer Review: Independent peer review, a cornerstone of NIH funding decisions, is reportedly being bypassed in favor of politically driven choices. The declaration specifically calls out the redirection of funds to unvetted projects and the removal of high-scoring grants from consideration.
• Imposition of a Blanket 15% Cap on Indirect Costs: The NIH has enacted a cap on indirect costs (overhead for research institutions), which the signatories argue will cripple universities’ ability to support research infrastructure, threaten graduate and undergraduate training, and damage longstanding NIH-university partnerships.
• Firing of Essential NIH Staff: The declaration details widespread layoffs and terminations of experienced NIH staff, which the authors say has slowed scientific progress, reduced transparency, and endangered patient safety in the NIH Clinical Center.

The signatories urge NIH Director Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya and HHS Secretary Kennedy to:

• Restore grants and contracts terminated for political reasons.
• Resume global scientific collaborations.
• Reinstate the independence of peer review.
• Abandon the 15% indirect cost cap.
• Rehire essential staff to maintain NIH’s mission and function

The declaration warns that recent NIH actions risk eroding decades of biomedical progress that have led to dramatic reductions in mortality from diseases like heart disease and childhood leukemia, and enabled major scientific breakthroughs such as the sequencing of the human genome. The signatories argue that arbitrary reforms and political interference threaten to reverse these gains and damage the public trust essential for scientific advancement.