Key Takeaways
- •NIH Director Bhattacharya (Witness) announced an immediate overhaul of the child and adolescent vaccine schedule, reducing recommended vaccines from 17 to 11 diseases to re-establish public trust.
- •Dr. Bhattacharya (Witness) affirmed NIH has ended support for dangerous gain-of-function research globally and is developing a risk-based framework to prevent future funding.
- •Senator Sanders (Independent-VT) pressed Dr. Bhattacharya (Witness) on whether vaccines cause autism; Bhattacharya stated he has not seen studies supporting such a link.
- •Republicans praised NIH's focus on health outcomes and ending gain-of-function research, while Democrats criticized widespread grant terminations and policy changes, citing patient impact.
- •Congress will continue scrutinizing NIH's modernization efforts, including the impact of grant changes, leadership vacancies, and the new vaccine schedule on public health and scientific research.
Read the full transcript
Starting at $350/mo
- Full hearing transcripts
- Speaker timestamps with video verification
- Organization & competitor mentions
- Same-day delivery
- Personalized summaries
30-day money-back guarantee on all paid plans.
Hearing Analysis
Key Testimony
On February 3, 2026, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) held a hearing titled "Hearings to examine modernizing the National Institutes of Health." The session, led by Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Ranking Member Bernard Sanders (I-VT), featured testimony from Dr. Jayanta "Jay" Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The hearing occurred during a pivotal window for NIH reform, following the decennial pattern of major legislation such as the NIH Reform Act of 2006 and the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. The primary focus was on restructuring the agency to improve scientific rigor, address a perceived crisis in public trust, and ensure that taxpayer-funded research translates more effectively into improved life expectancy and population health.
Overview
Chairman Cassidy opened the hearing by emphasizing the need for the NIH to move away from risk-averse, incremental research toward "big ideas." He proposed better integration between the NIH’s intramural (in-house) and extramural (university-based) programs, suggesting that scientists nationwide should have access to high-end NIH technology similar to how physicists use Department of Energy particle accelerators. Cassidy also highlighted the need to harness AI to make both positive and negative study findings accessible to prevent researchers from pursuing "blind alleys." However, he expressed concern regarding the recent cancellation of over 1,000 grant awards totaling $721 million, including projects on Alzheimer’s, HIV/AIDS, and vaccines, warning that political ideology should not masquerade as science.
Policy Proposals
Ranking Member Sanders focused his remarks on the "Make America Healthy Again" promises of the Trump administration, arguing that the administration’s actions—such as cutting Medicaid and terminating $273 million in cancer research—contradicted its rhetoric. Sanders also criticized the high cost of prescription drugs developed with NIH funding, citing examples like the HIV drug Symtuza and cancer treatments Yescarta and Abecma, which cost significantly more in the U.S. than in Europe or Asia. He advocated for legislation to peg U.S. drug prices to those paid in other G7 nations.
Key Testimony
In his testimony, Dr. Bhattacharya outlined several modernization efforts already underway. He reported that the NIH is consolidating peer-review functions within the Office of the Director to eliminate duplication and ensure "agnostic, rigorous scientific evaluations." He emphasized a shift toward human-based models to reduce animal research and a new "unified funding strategy" to align research with urgent health needs. Crucially, Bhattacharya announced that the NIH has ended all support for "dangerous gain-of-function" research, adopting a risk-based oversight framework in collaboration with the White House to prevent future pandemic risks.
Overview
The hearing featured sharp partisan disagreements regarding the administration's management of the research portfolio. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Senator Angela D. Alsobrooks (D-MD) challenged Bhattacharya on the disruption of hundreds of clinical trials, specifically those related to Alzheimer’s and cancer. Murray noted that one in 30 NIH-funded trials had been disrupted, affecting 74,000 participants. Bhattacharya defended these actions as "renegotiations" intended to "depoliticize" research by removing Biden-era Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) requirements that he claimed were scientifically irrelevant. He asserted that only about a dozen trials were ultimately terminated, while others were refocused on core health outcomes.
Policy Proposals
The "public trust" debate extended into vaccine policy. Senator Margaret Wood Hassan (D-NH) and Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) questioned Bhattacharya on the administration's decision to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule, which downgraded recommendations for several diseases. Blunt Rochester criticized the administration for comparing U.S. vaccine policy to Denmark, noting the vast differences in population size and healthcare infrastructure. Bhattacharya argued that the move was necessary to re-establish trust by being more selective and transparent, though Chairman Cassidy expressed concern that a "cacophony of notes" regarding vaccine safety could lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases like meningitis.
Partisan Dynamics
Geographic diversity in funding was a significant point of bipartisan interest. Senator Jim Banks (R-IN) and Senator Susan M. Collins (R-ME) noted that NIH funding is heavily concentrated in a few states like Massachusetts and California, while states like Indiana receive far less despite having top-tier research institutions. Bhattacharya proposed "delinking" facility support from specific research grants to allow universities in "flyover" states to compete more effectively. Senator Murkowski (AK) also emphasized the need for the NIH to uphold its federal trust responsibility to Alaska Native and Native American communities by addressing high rates of chronic disease and behavioral health challenges through community-participatory research.
Other notable exchanges included Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) inquiring about progress on Long COVID and antimicrobial resistance, and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) urging a "morbidity and mortality conference" style review of NIH funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Senator Tammy Baldwin (WI) criticized a directive from OMB Director Russ Vought to shift NIH grants toward multi-year funding, which she claimed resulted in 2,000 fewer grants being awarded last year.
Overview
The hearing concluded with Dr. Bhattacharya committing to provide the committee with a full list of affected research projects and a timeline for filling vacancies in 15 of the 27 NIH institutes currently operating under interim leadership. The committee indicated that these discussions would inform a forthcoming NIH modernization bill aimed at securing American leadership in biomedical research for the next decade.
Transcript
[Gavel sounds.] The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. The National Institutes of Health funds more than 50,000 biomedical research projects a year, more than any other institution in the world. NIH is careful to say public institution, but it's hard for me to imagine that's not more than any institution. These investments drive life-saving advances addressing chronic disease, curing cancers, treating other conditions affecting millions of Americans and people worldwide. I'm a physician who treated patients in my medical practice for over 25 years. I've seen the power of NIH-driven innovation to save lives. And I've seen the tragedy when a patient suffers and dies from a disease for which there is no treatment. And everybody in this room has seen that tragedy. And we don't wish to see more of it. For decades, Republicans and Democrats supported the NIH mission. Now, just about every 10 years, Congress considers NIH legislation. In 2006, we passed the NIH Reform Act, empowering the director to advance science through the Common Fund and better oversee all 27 institutes and centers. In 2016, we passed the 21st Century Cures Act, historic legislation accelerating large-scale research, bringing treatments and cures to Americans. Well, if my math is right, it's been 10, 10, and now it's 10 again. It is now 2026. Once more, we are on schedule to strengthen NIH and American leadership in biomedical research. Now, putting down partisan jerseys, working together to improve families' health, we in Congress and this committee can do this. I released a white paper in May 2024 with ideas from those who worked with the agency as to how to modernize the agency to make it better able to fulfill its mission and deliver more life-saving cures to those who desperately need. By the way, if you're dying, you're desperate. And we always have to have that perspective. Somebody watching on C-SPAN right now is dying and looking to this hearing to give her, to give him hope for the future. If we just keep that in front of us, it will give us a seriousness of purpose. So, in our white paper, we consider how to improve the NIH grant review process and application process to help researchers who are applying for NIH funding move away from risk-averse behaviors and fund more big ideas and fewer incremental experiments. And our current director is all on board with that. Secondly, how can the NIH intramural program, with its in-house scientists, laboratories, and research hospital, better complement research happening at universities? How can intra- and extramural scientists better work together tackling complex problems, sharing resources and expertise? Any scientist should be able to leverage NIH technology and the clinical center in the same way that a physics professor, wherever that physics professor is across the nation, can use a particle accelerator funded by the Department of Energy. This would allow genius at a small university to access the equipment to allow her genius to shine through as opposed to being thwarted by the lack of the equipment she needs in order to prove her theory. We have mid-career scientists who feel their careers are stagnating because they don't work at a university in San Francisco or Boston. Those are great universities, but there's a lot of bright people out there. We need their input if we're going to maximize the potential of the NIH. Next, how can we harness the power of AI to make findings from all studies, be they positive or negative, more easily accessible so that the scientist does not go down a blind alley that others have explored, but because it was a negative study, it just wasn't published and they would not know that it's a blind alley? And by the way, every now and then, at the end of a blind alley, you find something that points you in the right direction. Finally, Congress must strengthen trust in federally funded research by ensuring that the NIH funds high-quality, well-constructed experiments, particularly of research conducted in other countries, in a way that does not add unnecessary administrative burden upon the researcher. Dr. Bhattacharya, thanks for coming before the committee to discuss the agency's efforts and how Congress can assist. Since your confirmation, you've brought fresh ideas and a willingness to rethink how NIH operates, which will strengthen the agency in the long run. Now, I hope that the Trump administration's collaboration and support will move congressional reform efforts forward and get shared ideas over the finish line. But, but, but, we must acknowledge recent actions at NIH have created uncertainty within the American research enterprise and potentially undermine the agency's ability to serve. Now, right now, I'm just channeling. For just a moment, I'm going to be the channel from folks I've heard from. Republicans and Democrats on this committee have heard concerns about grant cancellations and the message that those cancellations and the lack of transparency around them have sent to the broader innovation community. Last year, NIH terminated more than 1,000 awards amounting to $721 million. Among were 58 projects on Alzheimer's, 99 on HIV/AIDS, and 97 related to life-saving vaccines. We have spoken about this, but I look forward to hearing your comments. It even appears to have canceled six projects examining biological differences between women and men, which I thought was a priority for President Trump. Beyond NIH, the Department of Health and Human Services last year announced the cancellation of roughly $500 million in mRNA research. Within the last two weeks, Moderna announced it would no longer invest in late-stage clinical trials for vaccines using mRNA technology. Now, this technology was advanced through NIH partnerships. It enabled President Trump's Operation Warp Speed, an historic achievement bringing a vaccine from conception to being administered within 10 or 11 months, saving millions of lives and reopening economies worldwide. Losing this critical tool in our defense against future pandemics puts our national security and an individual's personal health security at risk. I say this as a strong conservative. We need taxpayer dollars to research to help families, not to have it subject to political ideology, which masquerades as science. This includes correcting progressive Biden-era actions that coerced scientists into including DEI language in thousands of NIH-funded grants, even when it had zero scientific relevance and was a waste of money and certainly did not make Americans healthier. But we can get rid of DEI without upending life-saving research and America's biomedical leadership. Canceling critical investments that have long enjoyed bipartisan support erodes trust and makes substantive reforms less likely. Dr. Bhattacharya, this is an opportunity for you to address these concerns, to tell us about your path forward, which I've been very impressed with. I want to, and I think we want to be a good partner in this. I want the Trump administration to have the greatest NIH in history. And we have the power, the ability, the opportunity, the challenge to unleash American innovation to solve our biggest health challenges. NIH and Congress must work together to meet the moment and to improve Americans' health. The families, the patients, the desperate person watching is counting on us. With that, I recognize Senator Sanders.
Read the full transcript
Starting at $350/mo
- Full hearing transcripts
- Speaker timestamps with video verification
- Organization & competitor mentions
- Same-day delivery
- Personalized summaries
30-day money-back guarantee on all paid plans.
Not ready to subscribe?
Get a free daily digest with hearing summaries ranked by relevance.
Already have an account? Log in
