Within the next 2 weeks, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hopes to convince Congress of the public health relevance of some 200 research project grants dealing with human sexual behavior and drug use. A conservative advocacy group assembled the list of grants, amounting to some $100 million, and complained that the projects were prurient, wasteful, and lacking in scientific merit. But at least one NIH defender contends that a Bush administration attempt to inject ideology into science is really behind the list.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a leading administration critic, last week said the Bush administration used "insiders" within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees NIH, to help assemble a "hit list" of ideologically objectionable grants. Waxman accused the White House of "scientific McCarthyism" and of "imposing ideological shackles" on vital public health research. An HHS spokesman denied that any of its employees were involved.

NIH, caught in the middle, inadvertently fueled the controversy when officials began calling principal investigators to let them know their names were being circulated on a list in Washington. In some cases, the officials also asked the scientists to explain their research activities. This caused some of the scientists to worry that their funding was being threatened due to the controversial nature of their research.

NIH spokesman John Burklow denied any ill intent. "We called them as a courtesy. It was only fair and professional to let people know their names were on a list being circulated at a [congressional] hearing," he told The Scientist. "We were not questioning their research. In fact, we are defending the need to do research in these areas."

But Waxman, expressing "outrage," described the list and the telephone calls as a "calculated effort to subvert science and scientists at NIH to a right-wing ideological agenda" in an October 27 letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. "Imposing ideological shackles on this research would be a serious public health mistake," the letter stated, and urged Thompson to launch an investigation "to identify anyone at HHS who has actively participated in efforts to undermine peer-reviewed research at NIH."

Waxman has been hammering the Bush administration for some time for what he calls "politicizing science." In August, Waxman released a report prepared by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform, of which he is ranking member. The report and an accompanying Web site were created to expose the administration's "political interference with science."

The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), which represents more than 43,000 churches in the United States and Puerto Rico, says that it assembled the NIH grant list over a period of several weeks from public sources without any help. "I know there are important studies being conducted at NIH which do benefit the public," TVC Executive Director Andrea S. Lafferty wrote in an October 29 letter to Waxman. "But I do not believe the reasonable person would see evidence of this scientific value or rigor in the grants in question," the letter stated.

TVC's review "suggests that the NIH has become nothing more than another federal ATM for grant traffickers—a National Endowment for the Arts with a chemistry set," Lafferty wrote, referring to a 1990s controversy over federal funding for art projects that many congressmen and others deemed prurient or offensive.

The NIH grants under attack include research into male truckers who have sex with male truckers ("truck chasers") and female sex workers ("lot lizards" and "CB prostitutes"); comparing the sex behaviors of Mexicans on either side of the border; and studies of jealousy among homosexual individuals.

Lafferty accused NIH of "misconduct" and of being an agency that "obviously requires more adult supervision—a bureaucracy run amuck." She called for the Justice Department to investigate NIH's grant approval process. Lafferty did not respond to The Scientist's request for an interview.

Research supporters, including members of leading scientific societies, are defending the grants as inquiries that can elucidate such problems as HIV/AIDS transmission and drug abuse. "There's a vital public interest in these studies," said Howard J. Silver, executive director for the Consortium of Social Science Associations, a Washington, D.C.–based advocacy group representing more than 100 professional organizations in the social sciences.

"There are groups in this country who want to keep their heads in the sand when it comes to behaviors they don't like," Silver said. "Given the AIDS pandemic and the significant number of people with STDs and the volatile mix of drugs, sex, and disease, this research is necessary."

"We can't let moralizing trump sound science when the public's health and safety are at stake," said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a statement.

"[T]he integrity of the oversight processes themselves should never be compromised by intrusion of extraneous sectarian or ideological issues," added Jordan J. Cohen, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, in a statement.

But others see the dispute as part of the process by which the boundaries of scientific research are defined through political pressure. "I see this as part of a long history of not major, but ongoing, struggles between science and society to decide what are the appropriate norms to govern science by," said Dan Sarewitz, a senior research fellow at Columbia University and founding director of the Center for Science, Policy and Outcomes in Washington, D.C.

"Regardless of how one judges this particular issue, there's nothing new going on," he said. "For one thing, the federal science budget is a political construct, and decisions on what gets funded are made for political reasons all the time." While terming this case particularly "egregious," Sarewitz noted that science in the past has benefited from political interference.

"Yes, it sounds offensive and scary, but I think the scientific enterprise is pretty robust and there's a pretty good understanding of what's an appropriate debate and where people think it's not appropriate," he said. "This sounds like it goes over the line, but that's nothing new, either."

The grants controversy dates back to at least July 10, when by Rep. Patrick Toomey (R-Penn.) introduced an amendment during floor debate on the fiscal year 2004 appropriations bill that included funding for NIH. The amendment would have defunded research for four NIH grants studying human sexual behavior. Those grants were among a list of 10 that had been created by the Republican House Study Committee.

The Toomey amendment measure was narrowly defeated, but during the floor debate, Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Labor/HHS appropriations subcommittee, urged legislators to forward any concerns about the grants to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Separately, the TVC gave Committee Chairman Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) its much longer list and requested that the committee look into the matter. A committee spokesman has said that the panel was not investigating individual grants but was looking at NIH's overall grant management program.

During an October 2 oversight hearing cosponsored by the committee, Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Penn.) and other Republican congressmen questioned NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni about the sex-related research grants that Toomey had questioned on the House floor. Zerhouni defended NIH's peer-reviewed research. "One has to look at the balance between science, society, and health," Zerhouni said, adding that there existed "scientific justification" and a "definite public health connection" for the research efforts.

The congressmen asked Zerhouni to provide written explanations for the public health relevance of the grants. After the hearing, NIH staffers asked committee staffers for a list of the grants. They were given, evidently by mistake, the longer list generated by the TVC, not Toomey's shorter 10-grant list. NIH officials began calling the scientists on the longer list and are currently reviewing the grant applications and files.