AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, issued the following statement regarding an amicus brief filed by the AAMC in the case of Massachusetts et al. v. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., et al.:
“The AAMC submitted an amicus brief in this case to underscore the real-world consequences of unlawful terminations of National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants without warning or meaningful explanation. Across the country, the impact grows each day as promising research is halted, patients in clinical trials face the discontinuation of care, researchers lose their jobs, and graduate students have their admissions offers rescinded.
Academic medical centers are engines of both health innovation and economic growth in communities across America. Medical schools, academic health systems, and teaching hospitals rely on transparent and stable grantmaking to advance life-saving medical research, train the next generation of physicians and scientists, and deliver care that extends and saves lives.
We submitted this brief alongside the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, American Council on Education, Association of American Universities, Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, COGR, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to give a voice to the people who make the American biomedical research enterprise the strongest in the world. The AAMC urges the court to uphold the stability and integrity of the federal research process.”