The National Institutes of Health is considering deleting its commitment to “lengthen life” from its agency mission statement, according to a public notice.
The U.S. medical-research agency opened a public-comment period in August to solicit feedback on its newly proposed mission statement, which the agency drafted in response to concerns that its existing mission is “ableist.” The NIH’s current mission is to “seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.”
The new mission statement, if approved, would be changed to “[seeking] fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and to apply that knowledge to optimize health and prevent or reduce illness for all people.”
The agency is encouraging feedback from the public, particularly from patient advocacy groups and professional medical societies, on the revised language until November 24.
The suggested change came after the disability subgroup in the NIH’s Advisory Committee to the Director recommended the federal agency more strongly “support disability inclusion,” according to the subgroup’s December 2022 report. “The current mission statement could be interpreted as perpetuating ableist beliefs that disabled people are flawed and need to be ‘fixed,'” the report reads.
The office of NIH director Dr. Lawrence Tabak did not respond to a request for comment from National Review.
It’s unclear why the organization is considering removing the “lengthen life” phrase, or whether it’s directly related to the disability subgroup’s recommendation. But the proposed mission-statement change comes as progressives have grown increasingly vocal in their advocacy of euthanasia as a humane alternative to medical care that prioritizes the extension of life, even in the elderly and chronically ill.
Physician-assisted dying, whether in the form of euthanasia or assisted suicide, has become more popular in the U.S. in recent years. Notably, the medical practice is now legal in Washington, D.C., and ten states. New Mexico, Maine, New Jersey, Hawaii, Colorado, California, Vermont, Montana, Washington, and Oregon — almost all of which are blue states — currently authorize assisted dying.
Canada took it one step further by making the practice legal nationwide through its 2016 medical-assistance-in-dying law, which allows terminally-ill patients to voluntarily request their deaths if they so choose. In 2022 alone, over 13,200 Canadian patients received lethal jabs, accounting for 4.1 percent of all deaths in Canada. Since the law’s introduction over seven years ago, there have been nearly 45,000 medically assisted deaths in Canada.