NIH Budget Slims Down

A 2012 spending bill, approved by a Senate panel yesterday, would trim the NIH budget by $190 million.

Written byJef Akst

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Just a few days after a Senate panel approved shrinking NSF’s budget by $162 million, it signs off on a spending bill that would cut the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $190 million, down to a total of $30.5 billion. Though not a severe reduction, it is only the second drop in the NIH budget since 1970. (In 2006, the NIH funds suffered a $33.7 million cut from the 2005 budget. Stay tuned for a more in depth look at the history of science funding in the United States and Europe next months' feature “A Quarter Century of Fueling Science.”)

Still, given the financial crunch facing government budgets across the board, it’s a reasonably good outcome, Jennifer Zeitzer, director of legislative ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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