The announcement, which appeared in the May 29 issue of the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts (Vol. 16. no. 18), represents a continuation of policies outlined at a meeting last October of the Advisory Committee to the Director of NIH. Participants at that meeting agreed that NIH should not abandon its current system of peer-reviewed grants to individual investigators in favor of a major initiative on the topic. The program announcement is an indication that NIH still holds to that policy.
Speculation that NIH might become more aggressive arose after an April 27 report to the Department of Energy from its Health and Environmental Research Advisory Committee. That group, chaired by Mortimer Mendelsohn of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recommended that the Energy Department direct a mapping and sequencing project that will cost an estimated $200 million annually by 1993. The department is in the best position to lead such ...
