How does the NIH keep failing?

Here we go again. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of Health and Human Services (HHS), is once again in the news. You’d think in this post-Covid world, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra would be doing his best to keep his head down and his agency from the public’s attention. Instead, thanks to the House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce, the NIH and Becerra find themselves at the center of a controversy that includes the re-appointment of Dr. Anthony Fauci and a number of other NIH Directors and billions in federal biomedical grants.

If true, this failure means more than $24 billion in biomedical grants handed out in 2022 could be cast into doubt through no fault of those applying for the money. They acted in good faith. They, along with the rest of our country, assumed the NIH and HHS leadership followed the rules. Instead, whether through negligence or conscious thought, if the House committee is right, more than a dozen of these NIH directors were not re-appointed in accordance to the law.

And billions of taxpayer dollars were given away as a result.