Exclusive — Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn: NIH Controls Funding of Health Research, Backs 'Studies that Reinforce Their Power'

Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn noted how the NIH uses its dominance of funding for health research to empower itself on Thursday’s edition of the Breitbart Daily News podcast with host Alex Marlow.

“A big majority of the funding in anything related to health comes from [the NIH],” Arnn remarked. “The peer review system is responsive to the leadership of the NIH and the CDC.”

Individuals, institutions, and organizations soliciting research funding from the NIH are incentivized to pursue outcomes the NIH prefers, Arnn said. He observed how the near-monopoly held by the NIH over funding for health research corrupts scientific inquiry, given the absence of competitive forces.

He said, “If you put in for a grant — [scientific study] costs money  — only one in 10 is funded. Which one in 10 is going to get funded? There should be a competitive system.”  

An application for “a grant that runs against the grain” is unlikely to be awarded funding, Arnn stated.

The NIH should fund studies investigating more than one side of a given question, he proposed.

“These scientific grant-giving agencies should be required to become competitive,” he said. “If they fund a thesis, they should extensively fund the counter thesis and then let the testing go on. It really doesn’t matter what [the] thesis or counter thesis is, what matters is it’s looked at from all sides.”

Arnn recalled presidential medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci’s previous role as the head of the NIAID, a subsidiary of the NIH, and his authority of grant-making decisions. He said the CDC advocated for greater governmental control over “how people live in order to assure public health — how densely they live [and] where they live,” just “months before the pandemic.”

He said, “That’s a comprehensive state-planning function, and so that means they get power from a centralized system, and they’re partial to studies that reinforce their power.”

Arnn noted that thirst for power is a part of the human condition. He concluded, “That’s not even difficult to understand. Human beings are like that. It’s why we have checks and balances in the government.”

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