Project 2025's Bioethics Reform of the National Institutes of Health

Defunding the NIH over "aborted baby body parts" and using Christian Nationalist religious beliefs to limit research (Scroll to the end to listen)

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

The National Institutes of Health is the world’s largest government-funded biomedical research agency. According to the NIH website, 171 Nobel Prize winners have been NIH researchers or were supported by NIH grants funded by American taxpayers. Because it is not constrained by private sector profit motives, the NIH is able to take risks to make new medical discoveries that benefit humanity.

Of course, the framers of Project 2025 can’t stand that much success from one government agency. Especially when it prefers tools like the scientific method over the Bible. Here’s how they will destroy the National Institutes of Health.

Bioethics Reform. Research using fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions is immoral and obsolete. Research using human embryonic stem cells also involves the destruction of human life and should not be subsidized with taxpayer dollars. Good science and life-affirming, ethical research are not mutually exclusive. In fact, ethically derived sources such as discarded surgical tissue and adult stem cells (made pluripotent), not tissue obtained from elective abortions, have contributed the most successful treatments for a variety of ailments.

Project 2025, page 460

In 2014-15, House Republicans instituted “The Select Panel on Infant Lives.” Over the course of a 15-month “investigation,” anti-abortion activists pretended to be biotechnology executives who provided “facts” about biomedical research with fetal tissue. The committee, populated by Christian Nationalist representatives like Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), issued a 413-page report demanding that NIH stop using fetal tissue for medical research. (Source: Science)

The report falsely claimed that fetal tissue research had failed to provide a single successful medical treatment. Here is the rebuttal from the editors of Science:

Several important medicines now on the market were created using fetal tissue. Amgen's Enbrel battles rheumatoid arthritis; Genentech's Pulmozyme helps children with cystic fibrosis clear the thick mucus that clogs their lungs; and Nuwiq, made by Octapharma, treats boys and men with hemophilia, a life-threatening bleeding disorder.

The editors of Science go on to list effective vaccines derived from fetal cells.

Project 2025 again calls for the NIH to end fetal tissue and human embryonic stem cell research and use more “ethical” research methods like surgical waste and adult stem cells. Because “pro-life” policies are more important than actually doing life-saving research.

HHS should create and promote a research agenda that supports pro-life policies and explores the harms, both mental and physical, that abortion has wrought on women and girls.

Project 2025, page 461

Claiming the NIH has a monopoly on biomedical research, Project 2025 recommends defunding the NIH and directing biomedical research funding to the states.

Congress should consider block granting NIH’s grants budget to states to fund their own scientific research. Nothing in this system would prevent several states from partnering to co-fund large research projects that require greater resources or impact larger regions.

Project 2025, page 462

It also calls for term limits on NIH leadership such that people like Anthony Fauci will not have power again, leaving those positions vulnerable to hires who will put a conservative President’s agenda over medical science and saving lives.

Funding for scientific research should not be controlled by a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders at the NIH, many of whom stay in power for decades. The NIH monopoly on directing research should be broken. Term limits should be imposed on top career leaders at the NIH.

Project 2025, page 462

Project 2025 dings the NIH for its “woke” policies and calls for conversion therapy.

NIH has been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science. Instead, it should fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of cross-sex interventions, including “affirmation,” puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions.

Project 2025, page 462

Christian Nationalist control of the National Institutes of Health won’t just impact every American life. It will degrade all human life for decades to come. These policies will stunt medical advances, delay scientific breakthroughs, and undermine healthcare worldwide. We cannot allow such an important function to fall into the hands of religious zealots intent upon forcing us to live and die from the consequences of their faith.