Our lame ducks in the Senate have reorganized the National Institutes of Health.
No roll-call vote seen, not yet, at any rate. Voice votes conceal all. You’ll be missing some other things in the future, too. A few “slight revisions” were tucked into the NIH Reorganization, which passed the Senate in a late night horse-trading session. There were a number of trivial-sounding changes to previous authorizations. This is being sold as a minor revision of the NIH.
A few things, however, stand out, that go far beyond minor. For example, a reduction in required reports to Congress:
The NIH reorganization eliminates specified reporting requirements, including reports on:(1) the environmental factors contributing to breast cancer mortality rates,
(2) the Secretary’s expenditures with respect to AIDS;
(3) aging research;
(4) autism;
(5) a longitudinal study on environmental influences on children’s health and development; and
(6) a study on muscular dystrophy.
This bill had not been expected to pass the Senate during this Congress. However, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) bargained with the Senate to get the NIH bill passed in exchange for House passage of several bills the Senate wanted passed, including the Ryan White Act that funds community HIV/AIDS programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Powerful new oversight committees. The bill also sets up a couple of new oversight committees, one of which is to review the organization & operation of the various institutes. This committee will be composed of some Institute representatives, and others from outside the NIH. Its so-called recommendations for restructuring the Institutes will in fact be operative mandates, unless the NIH Director objects. It isn’t certain exactly what this will mean long-term for the NIH, however it is very likely that these actions will remove a great deal of Congressional oversight from the NIH.
We should not think that these were mere minor tweaks of bureaucratic reorganization. They were pushed through in a rush, for a purpose, as yet unrevealed. Here’s a guess: if these committees follow past track records of the Bush administration, it will mean that cronyism and commercial influence will reign over science and the public interest in the setting of priorities in the Institutes. Even the structures and existence of the Institutes within NIH will be in the hands of political appointees.
Are you ready for Bush’s FEMA-type appointees to be deciding on our health research, or cronies of Big Pharma? If you want to see a hint at what these changes will do, look at what’s no longer having to be reported. Who loses from this, and who gains?