Tuesday the official n. 2 of the National Institutes of Health has resigned and retired from the government service Tuesday, in another sign that the Trump administration is remodeling the public and biomedical research institutions of the nation.
The official, dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, dentist and researcher, was long considered a constant force and had resisted the presidential transitions. In a letter that Dr. Tabak sent to colleagues Tuesday, he gave no reason for his decision. A person who is familiar with the decision said that Dr. Tabak had confronted a reassignment that he considered unacceptable.
“It was a huge privilege to work with each of you (and your predecessors) to support and promote the Nih critical mission,” wrote Dr. Tabak.
Dr. Tabak resigned in a turbulent time for institutions, the main biomedical research industry of the nation, consisting of 27 separated institutes and centers that study and develop treatments for diseases such as cancer and heart conditions, as well as infectious diseases Like AIDS and Covid. Nih spends about 48 billion dollars a year for medical research, largely in the subsidies to medical centers, universities and hospitals across the country.
The decision of President Trump to cut billions of dollars in the financing of the subsidiary Nih has aroused an aspra judicial battle. And on Wednesday the Senate voted to advance the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a skeptical for vaccine and the choice of the president for the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who supervises Nih
Kennedy said he would cut 600 nih works.
The Nih said he would soon have a statement on Dr. Tabak’s decision.
Dr. Tabak was not well known to the public. But his decision to leave is surprising and destabilizing for an agency found on the hot political seat. He was seen as someone who could work through the party lines; He had survived the presidential turnover of both sides and had indicated that he expected to stay after Mr. Trump had been elected in November.
Usually, Dr. Tabak would have risen to the acting work of the director Nih during the transition from one administration to another. But the Trump administration has installed another researcher, Matthew Memoli of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as interim director. Dr. Memoli criticized the mandates of the vaccine against Mr. Kennedy.
As director of the Nih last year, Dr. Tabak rejected the statements of the Republicans according to which a laboratory loss deriving from the research financed by US taxpayers may have caused the Pandemia del Coronavirus. He said to the legislators that the viruses were studied in a Wuhan laboratory, in China, had no similarity with what triggered the worst public health crisis in the world in a century.
Ellen Barry Contributed relationships.