Page:Senator-rubio-letter-to-nih-re-woke-priorities.pdf/2

 researchers and how impactful their work will be to the field of biomedical research, not how important they prioritize woke values.

Furthermore, NIH has completely catered to the administration’s woke rhetoric instead of the science of so called “gender-affirming care.” In an attempt to further the agenda that sex changing surgeries and puberty blockers are “safe” and “effective,” the NIH is funding projects that are harming patients, and then considering the study a success. A recently published study, in the New England Journal of Medicine, evaluated the psychosocial outcomes of youth experiencing gender dysphoria who received hormone treatments resulted in two of the patients dying by suicide. Yet, the NIH only mentions the deaths of these young people as “adverse events” and concluded that two years of gender hormones result in positive psychosocial outcomes for young people. Similarly, the NIH is funding a study to investigate the cardiovascular effects of surgically removing men’s genitals on 30 patients with gender dysphoria. The chief investigator, Dr. Sean Iwamoto, has openly stated his belief that sex changing surgeries are “life-saving” and provide “maximal physical and mental health benefits.”

The NIH should be expected to fund project proposals based on the need, relevance, and impact of the research. Only 19.1 percent of research project grants were funded by the NIH in 2021. Instead, the agency is choosing to support deadly and irreversibly harmful procedures on Americans to signal to Biden’s base that they care about these issues. Though we are on the cusp of breakthroughs for multiple medical conditions impacting the daily lives of millions of Americans, the NIH has decided to allocate its resources towards woke “science.”

Instead of allocating critical funding towards important research efforts like Cancer Moonshot or the BRAIN Initiative, the NIH is using its $47.5 billion budget to fund initiatives and put forward messaging that caters to President Biden’s progressive base. These actions call into question the institutional integrity of the agency.


 * Therefore, I request a response to the following questions:


 * 1) How much funding has the NIH spent, over the past two years, on efforts related to or recommended by the UNITE Initiative?
 * 2) From what institute or program areas was funding removed in order to pay for the UNITE Initiative and its recommendations?
 * 3) If a grantee does not express support for DEI as a “core value” of their research, will this applicant be denied from consideration?
 * 4) How does the agency prioritize ideological diversity when selecting grantees?
 * 5) How much of the NIH’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget does the agency intend to use to promote DEI within the agency’s workforce and its grantees?
 * 6) What role do liberal activist groups play in crafting your department’s guidance on awarding funding to grantees?
 * 7) How does “the science” justify imposing the negative social, psychological, and physical consequences of failed “gender-affirming procedures – which include an increased risk of depression and cancer – on patients?