NIH grants still blocked—let NIH staff post meetings in the Federal Register!

Please really read this—it’s written personally by me and not by a bot. I’m a professor at the University of Minnesota doing cancer therapeutics research. I manage a lab with NIH research funding and employ four full time researchers and multiple undergraduate research students using that funding. Without our next grant being moved through the system, we will be on track to lose our funding after next year. My lab’s work, the jobs of my lab staff and students, and long term my scientific career and ability to keep moving science forward and creating biotech jobs, are all specifically at risk. Here’s the problem that is hiding under the radar: The NIH is still being blocked from moving funding forward because they are not being allowed to publish in the Federal Register. All NIH grant review and advisory council meetings have to be published in the register a certain number of days before they can be held. Grants cannot move forward without going through these steps. Even grants that have already passed peer review and have scores that mean they will be funded are being blocked by having their advisory council meetings held up from being posted in the Federal Register. So any grants that were on the docket for anything that didn’t make it onto the Federal Register before late January are STILL BEING BLOCKED. We urgently need your help to loudly point out where reporters, attorneys and judges can hear you that even though the administration looks like they are complying with the court orders, THEY ARE NOT—they are using this backdoor loophole to prevent NIH grant funding from moving forward. We desperately ask you to do something about this. I’m not alone in my situation—many scientists all around the country are in the same boat. Please use your voices on this for us and for everyone!