Too Much On Alzheimer's? PDF Version
Author: Steven Benowitz
Date: February 19, 1996

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) spent approximately $216 million last year-practically one-half of its 1995 total budget of $433 million-on research related to Alzheimer's disease. Overall, the National Institutes of Health funded some $311 million in Alzheimer's-associated work.

Richard Adelman Concerned: Richard Adelman worries about a lack of money for basic aging science. Is that too much? Is spending that much on Alzheimer's work hurting studies in other areas of aging, such as basic biology?

Richard C. Adelman thinks so. Adelman, director of the Institute of Gerontology and a professor of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan, is concerned that NIA is focusing too many of its resources on Alzheimer's disease and not enough on the basic science of aging.

Yet Adelman doesn't blame NIA for carrying out a congressionally mandated mission to study Alzheimer's, which afflicts approximately 4...

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