Employees from all 27 NIH institutes and centers gave their support to the declaration. Most who signed are intimately involved with evaluating and overseeing extramural research grants.

They called it the Bethesda Declaration, for the location of the NIH. “We hope you will welcome this dissent, which we modeled after your Great Barrington Declaration,” the staffers wrote.

The declaration took shape in that group and as word spread neighbor to neighbor in NIH offices. The dissenters remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his oft-stated ethic that academic freedom ...

This photo obtained by The Associated Press shows cardboard tombstones symbolizing canceled research grants at the NIH Visitors Center in Bethesda, Md., Saturday, on June 7, 2025. (AP Photo) ...

“The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international ...

His declaration drew together like-minded infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who dissented from what they saw as excessive COVID-19 lockdown policies and felt ...