Decisions, Decisions: NIH's Disease-By-Disease Allocations Draw New Fire

'BODY-COUNT BUDGETING'? Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) is concerned that diseases that cost taxpayers the most money may not be getting a proportionate amount of NIH funds. For the third year in a row, the National Institutes of Health came under fire this month for slighting some diseases and favoring more politically correct ills when it parcels out its research-funding billions. "What this whole thing boils down to," NIH director Harold Varmus recently told a special Institute of Medicine (I

Bruce Agnew

| 8 min read

Listen with Speechify

0:00

8:00

'BODY-COUNT BUDGETING'? Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) is concerned that diseases that cost taxpayers the most money may not be getting a proportionate amount of NIH funds.

For the third year in a row, the National Institutes of Health came under fire this month for slighting some diseases and favoring more politically correct ills when it parcels out its research-funding billions. "What this whole thing boils down to," NIH director Harold Varmus recently told a special Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee studying NIH priority-setting, "is whether you think the NIH does a good job in assigning the money it gets."

Varmus and other high-level NIH officials clearly think they do quite well indeed in allocating research dollars--$13.6 billion this year, and $14.8 billion under the administration's proposed budget for next year--to fund basic science and support research into, essentially, all human ailments. But not everybody agrees. In particular, many of the ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!

Join for free today

Already a member? Login Here