Many of the headlines suggested that the proposed ethics rules for NIH employees have been relaxed. But that's not quite true, as Ted Agres pointed out here. The rules on stock ownership have loosened, yes. But the most important restriction remains. That's the one forbidding those who labor at NIH to do outside consulting for businesses with a stake in NIH's labor.These decisions are a smart move for NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni. The previous proposed stock ownership rules were needl

I see that the $1000 genome is now an official US government project. NIH's genome institute (NHGRI) just announced this genetic equivalent of going to the moon. The agency is spending $32 million to develop technology aimed explicitly at sequencing genomes of individual patients for $1000, long an informal goal among genome scientists. NHGRI's announcement comes on the heels of (and was perhaps provoked by?) papers describing two new sequencing methods that would bring the cost of the Human

So did President Bush really advocate teaching "intelligent design" in his interview with Texas reporters the other day? Or were his musings about exposing students to different ideas simply a better-than-average example of political weasel-speak? The fact is the remarks gave comfort to his religious political base while disclosing nothing of his actual beliefs about creationism. And they were mushy enough to permit a semi-benign gloss from Bush science adviser John Marburger, a professed

Director of the Institute of Medicine since 1985, Samuel 0. Thier has succeeded in increasing both its budget and its public profile. In doing so, the Brooklyn native has been able to draw upon his experience as an academic physician and administrator. A Cornell University graduate, Thier received his MD degree from the State University of New York at Syracuse in 1960. He went to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as an intern and eventually became chief of its renal unit, while also jo

Q: The AIDS report is a major example of IOM’s increased visibility. Its recommendations have been widely disseminated. Are you happy with the response it’s gotten from policymakers? THIER: The response from the research community has been pretty reasonable. The major concern is that we pointed out that education is our only major intervention until therapies and vaccines are developed, but the amount of activity relating to education has been very modest. We also were concerned th

Donald Kennedy’s career as biologist, educator and administrator reflects his belief that scientists and other academics should speak out on public policy issues and conskier devoting some time to public service. As a result, his views on science, education, federal regulation and related topics have received wide circulation, whether he was speaking as a White House consultant, U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner or in his current position as president of Stanford University.