The AAMC on July 29 joined four other higher education associations in a joint letter (PDF) to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, asking him to reinstate every NIH grant terminated under executive branch directives that have been found by a federal court to be unlawful.
A ruling in two cases from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts resulted in the required reinstatement of over 900 NIH grants. However, nearly 200 terminated grants were outside the scope of the orders because the court limited its ruling to the grants held by the plaintiffs or the members of the plaintiffs’ organizations. In the letter urging the NIH director to immediately reinstate the remaining grants, regardless of institution or geography, AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, and the other leaders of the signatory organizations, urged the NIH to recognize that “there is no meaningful difference between the grants that are now being reinstated by the NIH in response to the courts’ orders and those grants that remain terminated.”
The AAMC filed amicus briefs in both district court cases [refer to Washington Highlights, April 18; May 2].