Deleting pandemic preparedness
According to a piece in Nature, on February 13th, staff members at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have been told to delete the words “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from the institute’s website, a move that experts say will hobble the United States’ ability to respond to future infectious disease threats. The journal said the directives were outlined in emails it obtained, but it didn’t name the person who sent them. It said four NIAID staffers spoke to Nature on the condition of anonymity because the institute didn’t authorize them to speak to media.
The staffers told Nature that NIAID, will likely deprioritize its traditional research pillars of HIV, biodefense, and pandemic preparedness as part of a broader reorganization and rather will now “address the most impactful infectious diseases that Americans currently face with evidence from gold standard science and … support innovative research to address fundamental studies in immunology and allergic and autoimmune diseases to improve patient outcomes,” Bhattacharya and colleagues wrote in a January 16 commentary in Nature Medicine.