Several active research grants related to studies involving LGBTQ+ questions, gender identity and diversity, justice and inclusion (DEI) is canceled at National Health Institutes (NIH), as they are claimed to not meet the “priorities” of the current administration.
Since last week, at least 24 letters of termination have been sent to researchers at different universities and dozens have appeared, an NIH employee with an knowledge of anonymity, confirmed to ABC News.
According to copies of some of the letters of termination viewed by ABC News, the canceled grants include research on “problems with transsexual” and “sexual identity”, including the study of stress in older LGBTQ+ adults and the epidemiology of Alzheimer’s disease and other LGB dementias at LGB.
“This award no longer affects the agency’s priorities,” all letters said. “Sexual identity -based research programs are often unscientific, have a little identifiable return on investment and do nothing to improve the health of many Americans. Many such studies ignore and not seriously study biological realities.
“The prerequisite … is incompatible with the agency’s priorities and no change of the project can align the project with the agency’s priorities,” the letters continue.
The letters state that the NIH usually allows the recipients of grants to “take appropriate corrective action” before the termination decision is allowed. However, the letters declare “There are no possible corrective action.”
The patient’s entrance to the National Health Institutes is shown in Bethesda, Md., October 16, 2014.
Gary Cameron/Reuters, file
It comes when President Donald Trump made extensive changes to the federal government during his first weeks of service, including the issuance of new guidelines that recognize only two sexes, promising to “protect women from the extremism of gender ideology” and the issuance of several executive orders aimed at dismantling initiatives.
Neither NIH nor the White House immediately responded to ABC News’ request for a comment.
In addition, the NIH institutes and centers have been asked to review the awards for new and current projects to ensure that they do not “contain any DEI or DEI -language research activities, which give the notion that NIH’s funds can be used to support these activities.”
According to an orientation document obtained by ABC News, NIH employees have been asked to place these projects in one of the four categories. The first category is, if the purpose of the project is only related to DEI, in this case the prize cannot be issued.
The second category includes Partial projects supporting Dei’s activities. The prize can only be provided if “non -compliant” activities are negotiated outside the project.
The third category includes projects that do not support the activities of DEI but may contain a language associated with DEI, which must be removed before a prize can be issued, and the fourth category includes projects that do not support any DEI activities.
It is unclear what it means for a project to support the activities of DEI or to contain DEI, but the orientation document includes examples such as the purpose of a meeting to be diversity or “statement about institutional commitment to diversity.”
On Wednesday Federal
“As it became clear from the declarations in support of a preliminary order against the application of the percentage change, the risk of harm to the research institutions is immediate, devastating and irreparable,” the US district judge Angel Kelly wrote about the attempt to limit costs indirect.
It remains to be seen whether the order will affect projects from universities that have received letters to terminate.
Peter Haralambus of ABC News has contributed to this report.
