Looming U.S. Shutdown Threatens Biomedical Research Pipeline

U.S. biomedical innovation would face a blowback under a looming government shutdown that threatens to halt thousands of NIH laboratories when the agency is already grappling with billions of dollars in lost and delayed research.

The National Institutes of Health would have to furlough roughly 75% of its staff, or more than 14,000 employees, if Congress doesn’t pass a spending bill to keep the government open before the Sept. 30 deadline, according to a fiscal 2022 contingency plan by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The contingency plan generally allows the NIH to keep skeletal operations such as caring ...