Every NIH grant faces proposed unanimous political approval

A proposal to reject grants without unanimous approval

Ars Technica reported that the administration is drafting an executive order that would place every NIH grant before a committee including Vought and Bhattacharya. Under the described arrangement, a grant would be rejected unless the committee agreed unanimously. The reported move came despite Bhattacharya's objection in a White House meeting.

NIH grant funding was determined by ranking proposals on scientific-merit scores from expert peer reviewers.

A reported draft executive order would subject every individual NIH grant to unanimous approval by a committee including OMB Director Russel Vought and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, giving Vought an effective veto.

Political approval added to peer review

NIH is described as the world’s largest biomedical-research funder. If implemented as described, approval for every grant would add a political step to the prior peer-review-based funding path.