Letter: The NIH Has Responded Forcefully to COVID-19
The Missing Part of America’s Pandemic Response
Last month, Cary P. Gross and Ezekiel J. Emanuel argued that scientific advances are essential to fighting a pandemic, and they faulted America’s top medical-research agency, the renowned National Institutes of Health, for not moving faster to produce more research on COVID-19. During the coronavirus pandemic, they wrote, “the NIH has appeared more a doddering, tired institution than a robust giant bestriding the gap between science and clinical care.”
On June 5, The Atlantic published an opinion piece that does serious injustice to National Institutes of Health (NIH) frontline workers, researchers, and administrators who, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, pivoted to achieve groundbreaking advances in vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests with unprecedented speed. In support of these workers, NIH strenuously objects to the article’s misguided and woefully incomplete portrayal of our COVID-19 response.
The article were published on April 21, 2020, and the panel has issued more than since. The guidelines have been visited more than 30 million times.
