The Trump administration has restricted the renewal of certain positions at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which could lead to the departure of thousands of scientists. The restriction specifically affects the NIH’s intramural program, through which staff are hired to work at the National Cancer Institute, other research labs, and a research hospital for patients with rare diseases, among other NIH divisions.
The intramural program is staffed by scientists, research fellows, and tenure-track investigators hired for 1-year to 4-year positions that had been regularly renewed prior to the new restriction. The White House has said that term-limited positions should not be renewed in order to downsize the federal workforce.
Joshua Gordon, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said that “stopping renewals of Title 42 employees would be devastating to the intramural research program and to NIH as a whole.”