Marc Abear: Putting race hustling In the National Institutes of Health budget

To The Daily Sun,

The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill contains an increase of about $2.5 billion in the 2023 annual budget of the National Institutes of Health.  It rose to $47.5 billion, or 5.6%. NIH’s budget 10 years ago was under $30 billion. 

NIH created a new research category called “social determinants of health.” It is one of several funding vehicles for grants. This is one way NIH is spending increasing amounts of its time and your money on equity, LGBT issues and “systemic racism and inequities.”

The NIH is prioritizing diversity and inclusion over medical research. This federal health agency’s primary research goal used to be finding cures and medical treatments. Through NIH, reverse racism and promotion of non-traditional sex is entering medical research.

NIH should not be making decisions based on rhetorical devices and racism.  That is what diversity, equity, and inclusion are: race hustling. Health research agencies should confine themselves to advancing scientific research. 

If agency leadership feels compelled to virtue signal, do it on your own time.  Do it with your own money, not tax dollars. Why are we making NIH into a Planned Parenthood look-alike?

The NIH is the nation’s self-proclaimed “medical research agency, making important discoveries that improve health and save lives.” This idea that the way to deal with the disparities is not by addressing root causes but by addressing outcomes is bizarre. 

Equity is reverse racism. It is the opposite of equality. Equity means treating people differently according to their race in order to affect outcomes. That is the definition of racism, whatever color you are. We should not be supporting racism. Not through the NIH or any other branch of government. Is this a reason to go further into debt?

Marc Abear

Meredith