Is the NIH Softening Its Support for Racial Discrimination?

The NIH has long been one of the main vehicles for DEI to corrupt medical education and research. But after a Do No Harm fellow spoke out, in at least one instance that appears to be changing.

Back in February, the NIH announced a notice of intent to publish a funding opportunity for cardiovascular disease research through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). However, the notice made clear that the NIH prefers applicants to recruit certain racial groups for their study team.

“NHLBI expects applicants to recruit individuals from diverse backgrounds, including individuals from underrepresented groups for participation in the study team,” the notice said. For reference, the NIH’s diversity guidance defines underrepresented groups as “Blacks or African Americans, Hispanics or Latinos, American Indians or Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.”

The use of “expects” in the notice is key: the NIH wasn’t simply encouraging applicants to include these racial groups, but rather commanding them to do so.

If an applicant didn’t implement this bizarre racial preference, they wouldn’t get funding.

Do No Harm Senior Fellow Dr. Kevin Jon Williams, a professor of cardiovascular sciences at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, wrote a March op-ed in the Wall Street Journal highlighting the grant listing’s discriminatory guidelines.

Dr. Williams, who has African ancestry, could have noted his underrepresented background in his application for the grant and thereby increase his chances of getting funding.

Dr. Williams nobly elected not to do so, and chose not to validate the NIH’s discriminatory enterprise.

Now, following Dr. Williams’s op-ed, it seems the NIH may have gotten the hint.

In the actual funding opportunity listings posted in July for the cardiovascular research in question, the NIH dropped the language telling applicants they were “expected” to prioritize certain racial groups in their study team composition. 

While applicants were still required to submit a Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives (PEDP), the NIH said that the applications would be assessed based on “the scientific and technical merit of the proposed project,” and that “[c]onsistent with federal law, the race, ethnicity, or sex of a researcher, award participant, or trainee will not be considered during the application review process or when making funding decisions.”

This is quite a shift. The NIH went from instructing applicants to racially discriminate when constructing their study team, to now saying that it’s illegal to consider race at all!

The irony, of course, is the NIH was the one telling applicants to discriminate in the first place.

“The new administration in D.C. should be able to help the NIH return to its core mission,” Dr. Williams said. “The voting, tax-paying public does not want racial discrimination.”

As Do No Harm has extensively cataloged, the NIH is one of the chief perpetrators of DEI in the medical field. And its diversity guidance still encourages racial preferences in prospective grant applicants. 

But this is a step in the right direction all the same. The NIH should abandon its embrace of DEI and its support for racially discriminatory application criteria, and get back to what it should be doing: advancing humanity’s medical knowledge.