"I'm not talking about a full-employment program for scientists," she told a recent meeting of the director's advisory committee that was focusing on the issue of indirect costs. "What we need to remember is that our goals are to fight disease and promote good health. That's what Congress gives us money to do."
But in the past several years, supporters of NIH have used the number of new grants to individual investigators as a barometer for the overall health of the NIH budget. They managed to push that number up to a record 6,440 in 1987, before it plunged to 4,840 in 1990. Although this year it is expected to once again top 6,000, Healy told the advisory board she no longer believes that it is an important target.
"We are not obsessed by the number of grants, either new or in toto," she said. "We are more concerned with ...
