WASHINGTON — The nation’s premier medical research institute is in “a scramble” to prepare for a partial government shutdown that could ruin costly experiments and leave sick patients unable to enter cutting-edge studies, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said Thursday.
Fauci stressed that patients currently in NIH-run studies — including those at the research-only hospital often called the “house of hope” — wouldn’t be adversely affected even if President Donald Trump and Congress don’t reach a budget deal to avert a shutdown at midnight Friday.
“We still take care of them,” Fauci, the NIH’s infectious disease chief, told The Associated Press. “You never want to put patients in any jeopardy.”
