Clinical trials and essential hiring will continue, acting director of National Institute of Health says.

[iemanja]

Source: New York Times

Clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health and at organizations it funds may continue, and patients may still travel to trial sites to participate in research, despite the Trump administration's restrictions on travel and communications, the acting director of the N.I.H., Dr. Matthew Memoli, said in an email to staff on Monday.

While Dr. Memoli’s announcement provided some clarification, it left many questions unanswered. Communications staff at the N.I.H. did not pick up the phone or respond to emails requesting additional information.

Dr. Memoli’s note emphasized that critical purchases for needed laboratory supplies and any contracting required “for anything directly related to human safety, human or animal health care, security, biosafety, biosecurity or I.T. security,” could continue.

Likewise, the email said, essential purchases and contracting needed to sustain research experiments that started before to Jan. 20 could be made “so that this work can continue, and we do not lose our investment in these studies,” Dr. Memoli said.



Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/29/us/trump-federal-freeze-funding-news#nih-trials-research

---

Trump seems to be restoring activities about which he's received the most pushback.

[Scrivener7]

1. Shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

Hopefully that will last past the inevitable ouster of the NIH head.

And since they're testing the strength of our objections ....

A statement from every Congressional Democrat on all of their social media saying that Democrats are in lock-step against the insane notion of annexing Greenland, Canada or Panama would be nice around now.

Of all the low hanging fruit that we're not picking, that's on the lowest limb.

[iemanja]

2. I think the funding freeze is of a more immediate concern

People's lives are in upheaval over it.

[Scrivener7]

3. Yes. But let's do both. Our alliances are in

upheaval as well, and a simple unified and repeated statement would go a long way.