Healy Sees Changes Ahead For NIH; Massey Backs NSF Agenda

NIH's new director isn't shy about stating her agency's needs, while NSF's new leader likes things the way they are WASHINGTON--Bernadine Healy, the new director of the National Institutes of Health, wants to shake things up. Walter Massey, the new director of the National Science Foundation, hopes to stay the course. If both wishes are fulfilled, scientists may see NIH becoming more active on a variety of issues, such as managing research dollars and promoting women, and NSF continuing to promote large interdisciplinary centers and projects with potential economic payoffs. Last month, in separate public appearances two days apart, the new heads of the federal government's leading basic research agencies signaled different approaches to running their organizations. Healy, a cardiologist who directed the research institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, offered her views during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Labor and Human Services Committee. They were her first public statements on biomedical policy since being named last fall as the Bush administration's choice to succeed James Wyngaarden. She was confirmed by the Senate on March 21. Massey, a physicist and University of Chicago administrator who on March 4 was sworn in for a six-year term, replacing Erich Bloch, expressed his opinions eight days later during an informal press briefing at the foundation. Some of what he said echoed comments made earlier during a hearing before the House appropriations subcommittee on NSF's proposed budget for 1992. Healy was greeted warmly by the Senate panel, which was eager to see someone filling what has been a 20-month vacancy at the top of the $8 billion agency. She displayed none of the shy manner normally characterizing a rookie administrator. Instead, she offered some strong words on a variety of issues facing NIH and biomedical research. One such topic was the financial management plan that NIH has drawn up in response to congressional concern about the rising costs of research and complaints from scientists about the stiff competition for funding. NIH held hearings last December on a draft report to gather comments from the scientific community, and was expected to release its final version earlier this month. "It's a good plan," Healy said after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the committee chairman, asked an innocuous question about its status. "But it doesn't go far enough in addressing the cost crisis we face." That plan endorses the idea of 6,000 new grants annually within a total portfolio of 24,000 grants. But it's deliberately vague on details, says one NIH administrator who requested anonymity, so that the incoming director would have enough leeway to make changes. On the issue of grant application success rates, Kennedy asked Healy if 40 percent might be considered the right level to assure the health of the research enterprise. "Forty percent would be terrific," she replied, "but it may in fact be too high. On the other hand, I know that 24 percent [the rate for 1990] is too low. My own feeling is that 35 percent is about right." At the same time, she warned Kennedy that NIH cannot achieve such a number without more money from Congress. "My motto," she said, "is that all advice should be accompanied by a check." In an effort to stretch their dollars, a few of the institutes have begun to think about capping the amount of money going to prominent senior investigators with large labs and using the savings to support young or first-time applicants. Although Healy didn't address the issue directly, her comments on how NIH should distribute its money suggest that she would support such an approach. "Our talent base must be diverse," she said in her written statement to the committee. "Energetic and irreverent youth must thrive along with the older and wiser heads." The hearing gave several senators the chance to applaud the administration for nominating a woman--the first woman--to lead NIH. Here, too, Healy took the opportunity to indicate a possible agenda. Asked by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) about her priorities on women's health issues, Healy replied, "It's a two-pronged problem. One is the inclusion of women as patients, as victims of diseases. The other is the inclusion of women as leaders. And it's not just a body count of the number of woman scientists. I'm talking about putting women in positions of leadership." The hearing also touched on the controversial issue of conflicts of interest among scientists who have a financial stake in products that they are studying. Two years ago Healy and other investigators in an NIH-funded clinical trial of postcoronary patients announced that they would follow strict, self-imposed rules limiting their ownership of stock in all companies with an interest in the outcome of the study. And she told her colleagues that they have an obligation to uphold the public's trust in them. "Perception matters as much as reality," she said in response to a question from Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.), who was reprimanded last year for questionable practices involving financial transactions. "Scientists think that the only thing that matters is truth. But the scientific community must realize that it's important to look at appearances, too." Compared to Healy's assertive performance, Massey's meeting with the press was almost perfunctory. Massey expressed great pleasure in the administration's request to boost the NSF budget by 17 percent, designating its passage as his top legislative priority. He refused to discuss the relative merits of a proposed $50 million instrumentation program versus an academic facilities program that NSF has operated for the past two years but was dropped in the 1992 request, saying that "I'm against tinkering with the budget." And he expressed support for almost every initiative launched by his predecessor. "The [engineering research] centers have proven their worth," he said, as an example, about Bloch's efforts to nudge the foundation toward greater support for research with commercial applications. "They are making a legitimate, appropriate, and important contribution to the research enterprise, and I'm sure that the science and technology centers [another large-scale, university-based research program] will also prove to be a success."

Healy Sees Changes Ahead For NIH; Massey Backs NSF Agenda

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