For two years, a panel of scientific experts, clinicians, and patient advocates had been hammering out ways to increase community engagement in National Institutes of Health-funded science. When they presented their road map to the NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya last week, he praised it for addressing a top priority: rebuilding public trust in clinical research. Which made it all the more confusing to the assembled panelists that this meeting would be their last.
The advisory committee, NExTRAC, was established in 2019 to take over the work of a storied panel, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, or RAC. Starting in the mid-’70s, as the first genetic engineering technologies were being developed, RAC oversaw the rollout of synthetic insulin and the earliest days of gene therapy’s rocky entrance into clinical testing, laying much of the groundwork for its modern-day success. Newer biosafety and ethical quagmires, like CRISPR gene drives and novel uses of personal health data, have been the purview of NExTRAC over the past five years. But in May, members received emails from Bhattacharya notifying them that the committee was being sunset as part of an effort to make the NIH run more efficiently.
Now it’s unclear how, or if, the NIH will foster open conversations around scientific and ethical issues involving novel biotechnologies. The loss of NExTRAC is part of a pattern of shedding scientific expertise and patient perspectives in the name of slimming down the federal government. Since January, President Trump’s administration has terminated nearly four dozen committees that provide advice to various agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a federal database.
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