Jack KingstonWIKIMEDIA, US CONGRESSThe chair of the House of Representatives spending panel that oversees budget decisions for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has expressed concerns that some NIH-funded research has a political agenda, breaking rules that prohibit the use of tax dollars for lobbying Congress or state legislatures, reported ScienceInsider.
On March 5, Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA) wrote a letter to NIH Director Francis Collins objecting to several grants. For example, one grant awarded to a tobacco control researcher Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, included money that was used to trace the origins of the Tea Party movement to groups funded by the tobacco industry. Kingston also cited a small grant awarded to criminologist Catherine Gallagher of George Mason University to produce a review of research on the health issues facing young US prisoners. Referring to a sentence in the project abstract stating that Gallagher would engage with advocacy communities, Kingston wrote that the grant “appears, on the surface, to sponsor an advocacy group for the illegal development of lobbying material.”
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