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Next NIH Director Faces Budget Issues ... Health Agency Has Seen Funding Stall

Colleagues,

As reported in today's Washington Post...The director of the National Institutes of Health may be the least political of a president's political appointments.

The director's job is not to promote administration priorities -- in fact, it's the opposite. The chief, if unwritten, task is to keep the president and Congress from meddling with the agency.

The NIH this fiscal year will spend just under $29.5 billion on basic and applied medical research. More than 80 percent of the funding takes the form of 50,000 grants to 325,000 scientists in the United States and a few overseas. About 10 percent supports research by 6,000 staff scientists, most working at the agency's campus and hospital in Bethesda.

In the past decade, the NIH's budget saw an unprecedented doubling, from $13 billion in 1998 to $27 billion in 2003. In the past five years, however, it has risen only slightly -- and, when adjusted for inflation, has declined. Of the many people inside and outside the agency who were queried about the issues facing a new director, nearly every one said renewed growth of NIH spending is the top priority....

Read on at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/12/AR2008121203973.html

ENJOY!

CC

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