NIH Getting Big Boost?

In a draft spending bill, the federal agency gets a $1 billion increase in 2012.

Written byBob Grant

| 1 min read

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WIKIMEDIA, REVISORWEB

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is slated to get a $1 billion boost next year if the draft version of a 2012 spending bill released by the House of Representatives last week makes its way through the legislative process unchanged. The increase would raise the NIH's 2012 budget by more than 3 percent over this year's allocation, and would match what President Barack Obama requested for the biomedical research agency.

The news comes as a surprise, with talks of deep and wide cuts to the federal budget swirling around Washington, DC, as the nation struggles to dig itself out of an economic hole. Earlier this year, in fact, the House cut the NIH's 2011 budget by 1 percent after threatening to cut it by ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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