Plea For More Grants Dissolves Unity Of Joint Effort To Boost NIH Budget

WASHINGTON -- The unity of a coalition that each year campaigns for a large increase in the NIH budget has been splintered by a group of bench scientists who say the agency should fund more grants to individual investigators. The disagreement reflects the growing strain on the scientific community from declining funding rates for such grants and the perception of some scientists that their work is being squeezed out by megaprojects like the war against AIDS and the effort to map and sequence the human genome. Last month the 8,000-member American Society of Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (ASBMB) joined with the 6,500-member American Society of Cell Biology to hire Washington lobbyist Peter Kyros. His assignment is to persuade Congress to spend $200 million more than the Bush administration has requested for National Institutes of Health grants to individuals. That extra money would boost from 5,100 to 6,100 the number of new and competing grants to be awarded in fiscal 1991, which begins in October. "The situation has become catastrophic," says William Lennarz, chairman of the department of biochemistry and cell biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and president of the ASBMB, citing the 24 percent funding rate for approved applications. "These grants are the keystone to basic biomedical research, and their continuation at a reasonable level is of paramount importance to us." Their decision to strike out on their own has been attacked by the Ad Hoc Coalition for Biomedical Research, which brings together more than 100 universities, professional societies, and voluntary health organizations. The coalition, an informal group first assembled in the early 1980s to ward off cuts in the NIH budget proposed by the Reagan administration, is advocating an NIH budget of $9.2 billion, some $1.3 billion higher than what President Bush has requested. (The current NIH budget is $7.56 billion.) Its proposal cites numerous areas in which increases are needed, including more money for research centers, traineeships, clinical trials, and repair of aging facilities. Although it also calls for an increase in grants to individual investigators to a level close to what the two societies are seeking, coalition representatives are worried that Congress will become confused by the two separate messages. "It understates the magnitude of the problem," says Dave Moore of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC). "It leaves the impression on the Hill that all of NIH's problems can be solved with $200 million." Beyond appearances, members of the coalition also dispute the wisdom of the tactics adopted by the two societies. "They expect vastly too much sophistication from their audience,70> says Carol Scheman of the Association of American Universities (AAU), which represents 58 research-intensive universities and is a member of the coalition. "You don't ask for $200 million when the president's budget is already $700 million short of fully funding what's already being supported." She adds, "I don't see it as a defection, but I think that they are being terribly naive." Robert Schimke, past president of ASBMB and a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University, pleads guilty to a charge of political naivete. But he believes that the two societies are entitled to speak for themselves. "We're not against anything that the Ad Hoc Coalition has proposed," he says. 'But we don't mind making a few waves. In the past we've been content to allow the AAU and the AAMC to take the lead on these sorts of issues. But we need to get our message across, loud and clear, and we think that Congress is sophisticated enough to make these distinctions." The two societies paid more than $100,000 to hire Kyros, a former Democratic congressman from Maine. Schimke says that his colleagues are prepared for a long and costly struggle, without any promises of success, to obtain adequate levels of support for their research. "We fully expect to be at it again next year, and for as long as it takes," Schimke says. "We recognize that [hiring a lobbyist] is an experiment. But we're all experimentalists, and we're willing to take our chances and see what happens."

Plea For More Grants Dissolves Unity Of Joint Effort To Boost NIH Budget

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