At Wednesday's House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) questioned HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in which he claimed that, "We don't have the cure for Alzheimer's... purely because of corruption at NIH."
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. Secretary for being with us this morning. I first want to address a comment that was made by the ranking member earlier as it relates to getting the president's budget out. Just a reminder that when President Biden was elected, he did not send out his first presidential budget until May 28th of 2021. So giving some grace to a new administration, I think is warranted.
00:23I want to take a minute to highlight the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, or for short, OMRF. OMRF was chartered nearly 79 years ago and started out with 18 scientists on staff. They now have more than 475 scientists.
00:42At which?
00:42It's the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, and I've actually given your team some information. Last month, I was proud to attend a ribbon cutting for their new biomedical data sciences center, which will provide computing and data analysis capabilities to support scientists in researching very important areas, including heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune diseases.
01:06This center cements OMRF as a leader in research methods and as a hub for collaboration in my district.
01:14It is important that OMRF continue their partnership with HHS in their research to expand life expectancy and health care outcomes across the nation.
01:27The impact that OMRF has had on Oklahoma and the country is really immeasurable.
01:33It ranged from certainly economic impacts to health care advancements, community engagement.
01:39The positive impacts are endless, and I want to mention them because, you know, I want to make sure that we're investing in the right things.
01:49Like you and President Trump, I am focused on reducing the prevalence of chronic diseases, and the discoveries that they have made over the last many years have produced three life-changing drugs.
02:00Most recently, in 2019, the FDA approved the first targeted therapy to treat sickle cell disease, and this is based on discoveries by OMRF researchers.
02:12The point being here, Mr. Secretary, OMRF has been crucial in advancing research and treatment of chronic disease and rare diseases for millions, and they take pride in being one of seven NIH autoimmune centers of excellence.
02:25And I hope you and your team will continue to work with OMRF so they can continue the positive impact in Oklahoma and across the country to make America healthy again.
02:37That being said, in order for the U.S. to maintain its lead in biotechnology, we need to ensure that the U.S. continues to be the country of choice for best and brightest in the field.
02:48What will HHS do to help attract biotech researchers?
02:51Well, we spend already, at this juncture, 70% of the research funding in the world on biotech and biomedical research is coming from my agency.
03:08And we understand that it's our aspiration that the United States remain the hub of biotechnology around the globe.
03:17We need to change some of the FDA policies to make it, to give a faster track for biotechnologies to get approved.
03:28We're working on that now.
03:30We're trying to reform phase three studies, for example, which are the longest, the most expensive, to do a lot of those functions by AI.
03:43We phased out, we're phasing out most animal studies at NIH and FDA, which, again, is a very expensive part of the process.
03:55And because we can accomplish a lot of those goals on safety and efficacy with AI technologies, we brought the best AI developers in the country into HHS.
04:06HHS, nothing like this has ever happened before.
04:10People walking away from billion-dollar concerns to come and work for us to transform our agency into a central hub for AI on the globe.
04:20And so, and a lot of that, those changes are designed to make it easier and faster to get, you know, biotechnology to market.
04:30Perfect.
04:30Can you talk a little bit about the changes at NIH in particular?
04:34I know that there's been a lot of conversation around that, certainly streamlining is part of that.
04:38But can you talk a little bit more about what your vision is for NIH moving forward?
04:41Well, NIH, you know, has, when I was a kid, NIH was the premier gold standard scientific institution in the world.
04:51Over the years, it was captured by industry and by, I think, a kind of ossification that happened at NIH because of the longevity of some of the leadership there.
05:04And there was a tremendous amount of corruption.
05:06And, you know, part of that corruption is we now have the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Energy, and the Department of State all saying that the COVID-19 pandemic came out of research and was then sent over to China.
05:23And that was the end point.
05:24We also have the sickest people in the world.
05:26NIH was the best science as opposed to protecting.
05:31We should be the healthiest people in the world.
05:32We're switching the trajectory so that we're going to really focus narrowly on chronic disease, ending the chronic disease epidemic.
05:42And then we're going to make sure that the science cannot be corrupted.
05:46And every scientific study is replicated.
05:49At the raw data for those studies is published.
05:52At the peer review for those studies is published.
05:55And we're going to focus on making sure that we get to younger scientists rather than the old boys network.
06:01And I could talk to you about scientific corruption all day long, about horror stories that we know have happened within NIH.
06:08One of those, probably the worst, is the amyloid plaque scandal.
06:13For 20 years, we were, because of utter corruption and fraud, we were directing Alzheimer's research to one hypothesis.
06:22And any other hypothesis was shut down.
06:24We should have the cure for Alzheimer's today.
06:26We don't have it purely because of corruption at NIH.
06:31Ms. Frankel.
06:31We are going to have it quickly.
06:32Ms. Frankel.
06:33Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
06:33Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
06:34Thank you, Mr. Secretary.