STAT+: Top NIH nutrition scientist Kevin Hall says he’s ‘unlikely’ to return to agency
Kevin Hall, ultra-processed food expert, says he took retirement after the HHS censored his work and that, despite requests, he's unlikely to return.
WASHINGTON — Kevin Hall, a top nutrition scientist who departed from the National Institutes of Health last month, said he’s unlikely to return to the agency, despite NIH director Jay Bhattacharya’s asking him back.
Hall took the federal government’s early retirement offer last month after several incidents where Health and Human Services officials censored his work, as reported earlier by The New York Times. Speaking on a panel at the Food and Drug Law Institute conference on Thursday, he said he was initially excited about Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s focus on food policy and the attention it would bring to his research on ultra-processed foods and how people’s diets impact their health.
“What I didn’t anticipate was the microscope that our research was going to be placed under,” Hall said. “Many of the traditional things that we would go through the NIH to get approval for were automatically bumped up to the level of HHS. It was required for a political appointee to approve those things.”
