Latest news with #Memoli
Atlantic
06-05-2025
- Health
- Atlantic
The NIH's New Cronyism
Matthew J. Memoli has had an exceptionally good year. At the beginning of January, Memoli was a relatively little-known flu researcher running a small lab at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. Then the Trump administration handpicked him to be the acting director of the $48 billion federal agency, a role in which he oversaw pauses in award payments, the mass cancellation of grants, the defunding of clinical trials, and the firing of thousands of employees. Now the NIH's principal deputy director, Memoli will soon see his own research thrive as it never has before: He and a close collaborator, Jeffery Taubenberger, also at the NIH, recently approached Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to pitch their research, three current and former NIH officials familiar with the matter told me. And as The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, the pair are now set to be awarded up to $500 million for their in-house vaccine research. (All of the current and former NIH officials I spoke with for this story requested anonymity out of fear of professional retribution from the federal government.) In a press release last week, the Department of Health and Human Services described the award's goal as developing universal vaccines against flu viruses, coronaviruses, and other 'pandemic-prone viruses'—at face value, a worthwhile investment. Universal vaccines are designed to guard against multiple strains of a virus at once, including, ideally, versions of a pathogen that haven't yet caused outbreaks. But this particular course toward pandemic prevention is shortsighted and suspect, several vaccine researchers and immunologists told me, especially when the administration has been gutting HHS staff and stripping funds away from hundreds of other infectious-disease-focused projects. As described in the press release, this new project, dubbed Generation Gold Standard, appears to rely on only one vaccination strategy, and not a particularly novel one, several researchers told me. And the way the award was granted represents a stark departure from the government's traditional model of assembling panels of independent scientific experts to consider an array of research strategies, and simultaneously funding several projects at separate institutions, in the hopes that at least one might succeed. Memoli's involvement in this latest award 'is clearly someone taking advantage of the system,' one official told me. When I reached out to HHS and Memoli for comment, they gave conflicting accounts of Generation Gold Standard. An HHS spokesperson confirmed to me that the sum of the award was $500 million and referred only to Memoli and Taubenberger's vaccine technology when discussing the initiative, describing it as 'developed entirely by government scientists.' Memoli, in contrast, wrote to me in an email that the $500 million sum would 'support more than one project,' including partners within NIH and outside the agency, and described Generation Gold Standard as 'a large-scale investment in a host of research.' When I asked HHS for clarification, the spokesperson told me that the funding 'will support multiple projects,' adding that 'the first initiative focuses on influenza.' The spokesperson and Memoli did not respond to questions about the criteria for other projects to be included in this initiative or the timeline on which they will be solicited or funded. Neither Memoli nor Taubenberger's work has ever received this level of financial attention. Both have spent much of their careers running small labs at NIAID. Taubenberger, who did not respond to a request for comment, has long been respected in the field of virology; a few years ago, he received widespread recognition for uncovering and sequencing the flu virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. Last month, he was also named the acting director of NIAID, after its previous director, Jeanne Marrazzo, was ousted by the Trump administration. He has frequently collaborated with Memoli, whose work has flown more under the radar. Memoli's appointment to acting director was also unorthodox: Prior to January, he had no experience overseeing grants or running a large federal agency. He had, though, criticized COVID-vaccine mandates as 'extraordinarily problematic' in an email to Anthony Fauci in 2021; Jay Bhattacharya, now the head of NIH, praised Memoli on social media for the scuffle, calling him 'a brave man who stood up when it was hard.' And last year, during an internal NIH review, Memoli described the term DEI —another Trump-administration bugaboo—as 'offensive and demeaning.' (Memoli did not respond to questions about how politics may have influenced his appointment.) Memoli and Taubenberger's vaccine technology could end up yielding an effective product. It relies on a type of vaccine composed of whole viruses that have been chemically inactivated; at least one of the vaccines under development has undergone safety testing, and has some encouraging preliminary data behind it. But flu viruses mutate often, hop frequently across species, and are tricky to durably vaccinate against; although scientists have been trying to concoct a universal-flu-vaccine recipe for decades, none have succeeded. When the goal is this lofty, and the path there this difficult, the smartest and most efficient way to succeed is to 'fund as broadly as you can,' Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona (who is unrelated to Jay Bhattacharya), told me. That strategy has long been core to the mission of the NIH, which spends the majority of its budget powering research outside the agency itself. Memoli and Taubenberger's whole, inactivated virus strategy is also 'not exactly cutting-edge,' Bhattacharya said. The technology is decades old and has been tried before by many other scientists—and has since mostly fallen out of favor. Newer technologies tend to be more effective, faster to produce, and less likely to cause side effects. And the pair's vaccine candidates have yet to clear the point at which many immunizations fail in clinical trials; usually, funding of this magnitude is reserved for projects that already have strong data to suggest that they're effective at reducing disease or infection, Bhattacharya said. Already, though, HHS seems confident in how the project will play out, according to its press release: The department is targeting FDA approval for at least one of the vaccines in 2029, and claims that the vaccines will be adaptable for other respiratory viruses (such as RSV and parainfluenza). But no published evidence supports the technology's compatibility with those other viruses. Multiple vaccine experts told me that Memoli and Taubenberger's work is not, on its own, a $500 million initiative; half a billion dollars would be 'a truly absurd amount of money' for any single research initiative, one NIH official told me. NIH labs are usually funded by the agency institutes they're based in, and given much smaller budgets: For fiscal year 2025, NIAID sought just $879 million of its total $6.6 billion budget for its roughly 130 internal research groups. At a recent meeting of NIAID leadership, even Taubenberger admitted that he was shocked by the sheer dollar amount that the initial HHS announcement had tied to his platform, an official who attended that meeting told me. In their responses to me, both Memoli and HHS claimed that the $500 million would eventually fund multiple projects. But neither would respond to questions about how that other research would be identified or how much money would be directed to Memoli and Taubenberger's work, which was the only research mentioned in HHS's announcement of the initiative. Memoli and Taubenberger's vaccine does appear to be Generation Gold Standard's linchpin: Memoli and the HHS spokesperson both said that their project would be the initiative's main starting point. That still puts 'a lot of eggs in one basket,' Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington, told me. If Memoli and Taubenberger's vaccine technology fails, without clear alternatives, the country may be especially vulnerable when the next big outbreak hits. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, one NIH official pointed out to me, the first Trump administration did pour billions into developing mRNA-based vaccines —a new technology that was, at the time, unproven. The government invested especially heavily into the pharmaceutical company Moderna, which has continued to receive substantial federal grants for its mRNA vaccine work. (HHS, however, is now reportedly considering pulling funds from one of Moderna's contracts, worth nearly $600 million, awarded to develop vaccines against flu viruses that could cause pandemics, such as the H5N1 bird flu.) But the early data on mRNA vaccines, and the speedy manufacturing timeline they promised, made them 'a smart bet,' the official said. 'I'm not sure Memoli's is.' While funding Moderna, the government also distributed its resources elsewhere—including to several other types of immunizations, made by several other companies, all of them with massive research teams and a long history of scaling up vaccine technology and running enormous clinical trials. The new initiative, meanwhile, appears to come at the expense of other vaccine-related work that was already in motion. The money for Generation Gold Standard, one NIH official told me, comes from HHS's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and was reallocated from funds originally set aside for Project NextGen, a $5 billion Biden-administration initiative to develop new COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. The HHS spokesperson told me that the shuffling of funds 'realigns BARDA with its core mission: preparing for all flu viral pathogens, not just COVID-19,' and called Project NextGen 'wasteful.' (SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is not a flu virus.) NIH leaders are well within their rights to funnel money toward favored scientific pursuits. Francis Collins, who served as director until 2021, wasn't shy about pushing through the NIH's neuroscience-focused BRAIN Initiative or the All of Us precision-medicine program. Monica Bertagnolli, who until January directed the NIH, kick-started the health-equity-focused CARE for Health program and advanced a Biden White House initiative on women's health. But those programs funded a wide array of projects—and none concentrated resources of this scale on any single NIH leader's own work. Taubenberger is also listed as an inventor on a patent on the vaccine technology, which isn't unusual in vaccine research, but it means that he could be set up to directly benefit from HHS's huge investment. (When I asked Memoli if he and Taubenberger might both receive royalties from a commercialization of their vaccine technology, he noted that he was not listed as an inventor and had 'no right to royalties on that particular patent.') Heavily funding in-house vaccine research does align, in one way, with the apparent priorities of Kennedy, who has railed against the influence of private companies on medicine. The press release about this 'gold standard' vaccine project brags that the technology is 'fully government-owned and NIH-developed,' which 'ensures radical transparency, public accountability, and freedom from commercial conflicts of interest.' The statement also notes that one of the vaccine technology's assets is its 'traditional' approach—a potential appeal to Kennedy's skepticism of newer vaccine technologies, one NIH official told me. (Kennedy has been critical of COVID-19 vaccines and recently falsely claimed that vaccines that target only one part of a respiratory pathogen—so called single-antigen vaccines—don't work.) Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, does not appear to have sought out vaccine research to fund, though. Memoli 'is really the one who has pushed this ahead,' one NIH official told me: A few weeks ago, he dispatched Taubenberger to brief Kennedy on the pair's work. (Memoli did not respond to questions about this briefing or about how he had solicited so much of Kennedy's support.) No matter the instigator, though, the outcome sends an unsettling message to the rest of the American research community—'the only way to overcome HHS priorities is to be part of the inner circle,' the University of Arizona's Bhattacharya told me. One NIH official put it more bluntly: 'It's very clear it's all cronyism going forward.'
CBS News
01-05-2025
- Health
- CBS News
HHS redirects $500 million to Trump appointee's vaccine project, bypassing reviews
The Department of Health and Human Services has transferred $500 million from research into next-generation COVID-19 vaccines, redirecting the money to a single vaccine project linked to the Trump administration's former acting head of the National Institutes of Health. Multiple federal health officials said they were surprised by the announcement, which bypassed the usual procedures overseen by career scientists at the NIH and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA. Those reviews are intended to ensure that federal research money goes to the projects with the greatest scientific merit. The HHS says the initiative, dubbed "Generation Gold Standard," aims to start clinical trials next year for universal influenza vaccines that could protect against any strain of the virus. It hopes to get a vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration by 2029. All of the money is being transferred to an influenza vaccine project called beta-propiolactone or BPL, according to emails seen by CBS News. Two officials said the decision to pour $500 million into a single vaccine platform is unusual, given the limited data on it. The transfer makes it effectively one of the largest awards to date from a BARDA effort to speed funding to new experimental vaccines and treatments, topping a previous award of $452 million to a company developing an experimental oral COVID-19 vaccine. An HHS spokesperson told CBS News that "decision-making for project Generation Gold Standard was a collaborative process, between leaders of HHS, in an effort to direct funding for a BPL vaccine for all influenza threats, not just one." The Wall Street Journal previously reported news of the project. The vaccine underwent testing for safety results earlier this year in a small study led by NIH researchers Dr. Matthew Memoli and Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger. The research was what scientists call a Phase 1 study, the first step to researching a potential vaccine in humans. Memoli had served as the acting head of the NIH during a controversial transition in recent months, overseeing Trump administration directives like steep cuts to research funding and the medical research agency's staff and leadership. Taubenberger, who holds a patent for the BPL vaccine platform, was picked to be the acting head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, after the institute's previous director was ousted. BARDA and NIH officials were ordered to redirect the money to Memoli's research by Noah Miller, a special assistant hired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to emails seen by CBS News. Two officials said it was unusual for a political appointee to handpick a project or researcher to be funded without vetting from career scientists or outside review. The money is coming from the "Project NextGen" initiative, a $5 billion effort launched under the Biden administration that had previously funded multiple research projects into studying potential COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The NIH had previously awarded $62.4 million in grant money to researchers at seven universities working on "pan-coronavirus" vaccines. From BARDA, the department had also backed four vaccine makers going into larger Phase 2B clinical trials to study experimental COVID-19 vaccines, in awards totaling $551 million. Those followed requests by the NIH and BARDA for researchers and vaccine companies to submit proposals for backing from the federal government. Another HHS spokesperson, Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano, said in an email that the department's new initiative "realigns BARDA with its core mission: preparing for all flu viral pathogens, not just COVID-19." "It delivers a cost-effective, accountable alternative to the Biden administration's wasteful Project NextGen, which spent $1.63 billion on COVID-19 vaccines and $1.19 billion on therapeutics, neglecting broader pandemic preparedness," Feliciano said. In its release, the department described the decision as a "decisive shift toward transparency, effectiveness, and comprehensive preparedness," by focusing on "in-house development" of vaccines instead of projects from outside researchers. It is also planning to develop other vaccines for COVID-19 using BPL, which it calls "traditional vaccine technology brought into the 21st century." "Our commitment is clear: every innovation in vaccine development must be grounded in gold standard science and transparency, and subjected to the highest standards of safety and efficacy testing," Kennedy said.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Scientists Say NIH Officials Told Them To Scrub mRNA References on Grants
Registered nurse Orlyn Grace, left, administers a COVID-19 booster vaccination to Jeanie Merriman, right, at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic. Photo by. National Institutes of Health officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications, two researchers said, in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research. The mRNA technology is under study at the NIH for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, including flu and AIDS, and also cancer. It was deployed in the development of COVID-19 vaccines credited with saving 3 million lives in the U.S. alone — an accomplishment President Donald Trump bragged about in his first term. A scientist at a biomedical research center in Philadelphia wrote to a colleague, in an email reviewed by KFF Health News, that a project officer at NIH had 'flagged our pending grant as having an mRNA vaccine component.' 'It's still unclear whether mRNA vaccine grants will be canceled,' the scientist added. NIH officials also told a senior NIH-funded vaccine scientist in New York state, who does not conduct mRNA vaccine research but described its efficacy in previous grant applications, that all references to mRNA vaccines should be scrubbed from future applications. Scientists relayed their experiences on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation by the Trump administration. A senior official at the National Cancer Institute confirmed that NIH acting Director Matthew Memoli sent an email across the NIH instructing that any grants, contracts, or collaborations involving mRNA vaccines be reported up the chain to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s office and the White House. Memoli sent a similar message ahead of the agency canceling other research, such as studies of vaccine hesitancy. Memoli's email on that topic bluntly stated that NIH was not interested in learning why people shun vaccines or in exploring ways to 'improve vaccine interest and commitment.' The National Cancer Institute official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that 'it is reasonable to assume mRNA vaccine work is next.' The official said a similar memo also went out regarding NIH-funded work in South Africa, which the White House has targeted over false claims that the country's government is persecuting white people. More recently, another one went out regarding all global research collaborations, the official said. Spokespeople for the White House, HHS, and the NIH did not respond to requests for comment. The NIH, whose latest annual budget was $47 billion, is one of the world's most critical sources of funding for basic biomedical research. Its mission and programs are under unprecedented scrutiny from Trump's White House and the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk-led agency created by a Trump executive order that has directed federal agencies to prepare for widespread layoffs. The NIH is funding at least 130 studies involving the mRNA technology in covid vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that have been administered to billions of people worldwide. A former government official familiar with internal discussions said that the Trump administration intends to cut some grants for mRNA vaccine research but that the timing is unclear. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships with the administration. Political conservatives in the U.S. have promulgated conspiracy theories, unsupported by scientific evidence, that the shots and their relatively new technology are dangerous. This has undermined public support for covid vaccinations and mRNA research. 'There will not be any research funded by NIH on mRNA vaccines,' the scientist in New York said in an interview. 'MAGA people are convinced that these vaccines have killed and maimed tens of thousands of people. It's not true, but they believe that.' Meanwhile, hundreds of other vaccine-related studies are in limbo. Kawsar Talaat, a vaccine researcher at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, has been waiting since the fall for money needed to recruit subjects for a study of an antidiarrheal vaccine. 'NIH approved our funding,' she said, 'and now we're waiting, and we don't know if it's going forward or going to be killed.' The scientist in Philadelphia signaled that he believes Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, is responsible for the NIH's turn against mRNA research. 'Kennedy's war on vaccines has started,' the scientist told his colleague. The scientist in New York said that it was 'ridiculous' to remove mRNA language from the grant applications. But 'if my grant is rejected for any reason,' the scientist said, 'people in my lab will lose their jobs.' 'I've worked with some of them for 20 years,' the scientist added. 'They have children and families. There is a real climate of fear in academia about this now, especially among vaccine scientists.' 'My grant does not involve a request for funds to conduct mRNA vaccine experiments,' the scientist said, 'so my principal concern was to avoid word-search flags that, at minimum, would lead to delays in any funding.' While tenured research professors at universities generally receive a salary from their institution, the staffers who work in their labs and offices are often paid through NIH grants. The 2023 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was given to two scientists for developing mRNA vaccines, through work that relied on pharmaceutical companies and on NIH scientists working under infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci. According to Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who chairs the chamber's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Kennedy promised during his Senate confirmation process that he would protect 'the public health benefit of vaccination' and 'work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems, and not establish parallel systems.' Cassidy, a physician, had expressed reservations about confirming Kennedy to the HHS post and challenged his anti-vaccine views during a confirmation hearing. He ended up voting for him, he said, because Kennedy had agreed to work closely with Cassidy and his committee. However, Kennedy has faced scrutiny in his first weeks in office for his handling of a large measles outbreak among mostly unvaccinated people in Texas that has led to the death of a child, the first U.S. measles death in more than a decade. A patient who tested positive for measles died in New Mexico, but the cause hasn't been confirmed. Instead of urging vaccination against the disease, an almost surefire way to prevent infection, Kennedy has blamed malnourishment for the outbreak, promoted unproven treatments for measles, and falsely claimed in one Fox News interview that the vaccine is ineffective and even dangerous. Cassidy did not respond to a request for comment on the NIH's potential abandonment of mRNA vaccine research. As part of the Trump administration's push to examine spending on mRNA vaccines, health officials are reviewing a $590 million contract for bird flu shots that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna, Bloomberg News has reported. Legislation introduced by GOP lawmakers in at least seven states is aimed at banning or limiting mRNA vaccines. In some cases, the measures would hit doctors who give the injections with criminal penalties, fines, and the possible revocation of their licenses. Stephanie Armour and Céline Gounder contributed to this article. We'd like to speak with current and former personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies who believe the public should understand the impact of what's happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please message KFF Health News on Signal at (415) 519-8778 or . KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF. Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing. This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
NIH resumes critical grant-making process after federal communications freeze at HHS
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will resume important meetings and travel associated with the critical grant-review process amid an agency-wide communications freeze at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While the agency is working its way back to normalcy, its operations are still not completely back to what they were before President Donald Trump took office. The advisory council and scientific review meetings associated with the NIH's grant-making process, in which outside scientists provide a final grant review and strategic advice before the finalization of a new program, have continued but will not yet meet in open session. When Trump took office, he initiated a freeze on external communications at HHS and all of its sub-agencies. Earlier this week, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said that "several types of external communications" are no longer subject to the pause, and "all HHS divisions have been given clear guidance on how to seek approval for any other type of mass communication." Medical Expert Gives Healthy, Cost-effective Protein Alternatives For Chicken, Eggs NIH is currently taking things day-by-day to ensure they are meeting their obligations under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which governs the operation of federal advisory committees and emphasizes public involvement through open meetings and reporting. Last week, NIH director Matthew Memoli sent a letter to staff seeking to clarify the ongoing communications pause. According to Memoli, the freeze had been issued to "allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization," but noted that due to "confusion on the scope of the pause" he wanted to provide additional guidance. Read On The Fox News App In addition to halting announcements, press releases, website and social media posts, new guidance, and new regulations, the freeze also halted public appearances and travel by agency officials, and prohibited new purchases or service requests related to agency work. The move caused anger and confusion among both HHS officials and those in the broader medical community, particularly due to the potential pause of critical health research. Seafood Samples Contain High Levels Of Microplastics In Us State, Say Researchers In his memo to staff, Memoli clarified that any research or clinical trials initiated before Jan. 20 can keep going "so that this work can continue, and we do not lose our investment in these studies." Officials working on these studies may also purchase any "necessary supplies" and conduct meetings related to such work. Although new research projects are still prohibited, NIH staff were told they could continue submitting papers to medical journals and can communicate with those journals about submitted work. Travel and hiring for such work can continue as well, Memoli indicated, but his office must grant specific exemptions for new hires as Trump also initiated a freeze on the hiring of new federal civilian employees across all agencies during his first week in office. Routine travel planned for after Feb. 1 "does not need to be canceled at this time," Memoli added. Patients receiving treatment at NIH facilities can also continue to do so. NIH can also submit documents to the Federal Register and send correspondence to public officials. While the pause at HHS has caused a firestorm of concern and criticism, Dr. Ali Khan, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist who is now the dean of the University of Nebraska's school of public health, told the Associated Press that such pauses are not unusual. Khan said concern is only warranted if the pause was aimed at "silencing the agencies around a political narrative."Original article source: NIH resumes critical grant-making process after federal communications freeze at HHS
Fox News
07-02-2025
- Health
- Fox News
NIH resumes critical grant-making process after federal communications freeze at HHS
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will resume important meetings and travel associated with the critical grant-review process amid an agency-wide communications freeze at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While the agency is working its way back to normalcy, its operations are still not completely back to what they were before President Donald Trump took office. The advisory council and scientific review meetings associated with the NIH's grant-making process, in which outside scientists provide a final grant review and strategic advice before the finalization of a new program, have continued but will not yet meet in open session. When Trump took office, he initiated a freeze on external communications at HHS and all of its sub-agencies. Earlier this week, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said that "several types of external communications" are no longer subject to the pause, and "all HHS divisions have been given clear guidance on how to seek approval for any other type of mass communication." NIH is currently taking things day-by-day to ensure they are meeting their obligations under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which governs the operation of federal advisory committees and emphasizes public involvement through open meetings and reporting. Last week, NIH director Matthew Memoli sent a letter to staff seeking to clarify the ongoing communications pause. According to Memoli, the freeze had been issued to "allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization," but noted that due to "confusion on the scope of the pause" he wanted to provide additional guidance. In addition to halting announcements, press releases, website and social media posts, new guidance, and new regulations, the freeze also halted public appearances and travel by agency officials, and prohibited new purchases or service requests related to agency work. The move caused anger and confusion among both HHS officials and those in the broader medical community, particularly due to the potential pause of critical health research. In his memo to staff, Memoli clarified that any research or clinical trials initiated before Jan. 20 can keep going "so that this work can continue, and we do not lose our investment in these studies." Officials working on these studies may also purchase any "necessary supplies" and conduct meetings related to such work. Although new research projects are still prohibited, NIH staff were told they could continue submitting papers to medical journals and can communicate with those journals about submitted work. Travel and hiring for such work can continue as well, Memoli indicated, but his office must grant specific exemptions for new hires as Trump also initiated a freeze on the hiring of new federal civilian employees across all agencies during his first week in office. Routine travel planned for after Feb. 1 "does not need to be canceled at this time," Memoli added. Patients receiving treatment at NIH facilities can also continue to do so. NIH can also submit documents to the Federal Register and send correspondence to public officials. While the pause at HHS has caused a firestorm of concern and criticism, Dr. Ali Khan, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist who is now the dean of the University of Nebraska's school of public health, told the Associated Press that such pauses are not unusual. Khan said concern is only warranted if the pause was aimed at "silencing the agencies around a political narrative."
