WASHINGTON-The drive to quadruple federal funding for AIDS research to $1 billion annually faces an uncertain future within the Reagan administration and in Congress.
A star-studded joint committee of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine has urged the massive increase after an intensive six-month study. Its report, issued late last month, also chides the National Institutes of Health for not enlisting enough university researchers in its effort to better understand the basic nature of the deadly virus.
"If the senator has his way, funding will be increased," said a spokesman for Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.), outgoing chairman of the Senate appropriations sub-committee that handles the majority of AIDS funding. "But it's hard to say now what lies ahead, and whether a $1 billion budget is realistic for 1990."
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is "looking at the possibility of developing a budget ...
