Comment from Keela Herr

[200.205, 200.340] To Whom it May Concern: I am a Professor of Nursing and have a career of over 35 years conducting research to improve the quality of pain care for our senior citizens. Our scientific system has been established to assure peer review of the quality and importance of research from individuals with well-established knowledge and expertise. Allowing political appointees to override peer review recommendations is the antithesis of an open, fair and evidence-based decision-making process. This could have potentially stopped my ability to develop assessment approaches for elders with dementia--our most vulnerable citizens and develop quality evidence-based guidelines to support and educate providers. If my prior active grants were terminated for any political reasons, the research would stop as we depend on federal funding to support high priority topics for the country. The scientific process is a long-standing critical aspect assuring quality, fairness and ethical approaches to decision-making on grant funding. Any intrusion on the use of peer review and scientific experts in deciding the priority, quality and importance of any given research project will be detrimental to our society! I strongly oppose the proposed plan to involve political appointees in decision making.