Madison Area Lyme Support Group

The author of today’s piece is a senior NIH official who wished to remain anonymous to protect themselves from reprisals.

As someone who works directly with the NIH Director’s office, I am dismayed by the disingenuous coverage of NIH in places like the New York Times and Science Magazine. Very little of what I read comports with my own experience and I am worried that scientists and the general public are getting a false view of the real problems inside the world’s largest funder of biomedical research.

Every large institution is fraught with palace politics, but today’s NIH is suffering from a deeply entrenched senior leadership in the director’s office that is plagued by enmity, distrust and isolation. The NIH Director works in Building 1 and oversees 27 other Institutes that research various diseases—the one most people have heard of is the National Cancer Institute. But to most of these institute directors, Building1 is a dark hole they both fear and despise. If you’re a running a research lab in Wisconsin this probably doesn’t matter to you; if you’re bed ridden with an undiagnosed, complex neurological disease—a life put on hold—why would you care?

But at every level today NIH’s management is distanced further away from its overall mission to advance science that improves health.

NIH scientists are quite busy with their research and don’t always read news about NIH scandals. I don’t, because I don’t really have time, nor do I care. But turmoil from the recent election has caused me to read about the retirement of Dr. Lawrence Tabak, who served as Principal Deputy Director, the number two position at NIH. I have worked with and observed Dr. Tabak’s ascent to this commanding position at NIH, from which he weaponized systems and processes to harm those who disagreed with his views or decisions. (See link for article)

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Important quotes:

NIH is not a merit-based system. It’s a cabal where people appoint their loyalists and contrive to manipulate our public agency to their personal advantage.

NIH labs and research programs get reviewed by scientists at prestigious research universities to ensure they publish excellent studies. But these university scientists are, at the same time, beholden to the NIH for grants to fund their own studies. This conflict of interest ensures that the reviews are biased to favor NIH labs, because no professor wants to anger the agency that funds his own grants.

Right out of the horse’s mouth.

And this, right here, is why we haven’t seen a shred of helpful research in Lymeland in over 40 years.  These cabal loyalists know they must repeat the accepted narrative or be left in the dust.

Will this change now?

Time will tell, but I’m not holding my breath.

For more:

• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2022/03/23/a-powerful-unelected-cabal-controls-both-scientific-funding-health-policy-in-america-dr-scott-atlas/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/28/sit-down-science/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/13/lyme-science-owned-by-good-ol-boys/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/02/22/why-mainstream-lyme-msids-research-remains-in-the-dark-ages/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2021/09/21/get-sicker-anatomy-of-a-failed-policy/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/05/13/covid-19-puts-spotlight-on-science-but-scientists-often-lie/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2022/05/11/350m-in-secret-payments-given-to-fauci-collins-and-nih-scientists/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2022/05/19/nih-research-executive-received-70-secret-royalty-payments-colleague-got-7/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2023/03/22/pfizers-collusion-with-nih-repeal-bayh-dole-act/