In your "Postdocs: Pawing out of Purgatory,"1 you have inadvertently misquoted me. You state that, "They point to the NIH, which doesn't provide benefits for its more than 3000 postdocs." That is incorrect--we do indeed provide excellent health insurance for all our postdocs as well as our predocs. The statement that I made, "That's not going to change. There are too many government regulations that restrict our ability to provide benefits," referred only to retirement benefits since our trainees are not government employees.
Michael M. Gottesman, MD
Deputy Director for Intramural Research
National Institutes of Health
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At the end of your story1 you suggest that organizations (presumably composed of postdocs) may be the only way to change the situation. This may be true, but if I belonged to such an organization I would think long and hard about revealing such membership on my CV when applying for a tenure-track ...
