More than 40 scientific organizations and 170 cosponsors in the House of Representatives were in favor of the bill. Yet it looked ready to expire in the Senate during the waning days of the 106th Congress, until Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) unexpectedly ushered it through a voice vote at the close of the Dec. 15 session. A week later, Clinton was sent a letter hastily organized by the American Psychological Society (APS) and cosigned by 22 other science and public health groups, urging a veto.
Resistance to NIBIB stemmed from its unusual focus on technology rather than on a disease or organ system. Imaging and bioengineering are conducted in virtually all the institutes, raising concerns that NIBIB would apply much of the funding available for such research to projects unrelated to specific disorders.
Since the early 1980s, several attempts had been made to reconfigure NIH laboratories or form centers ...
