The AVE previously reported that the House version of the NIH budget held some good news, a proposed 3.3% increase. That seems impressive in these bad times but there are serious issues unmentioned in the report.
1. The bill would require that NIH award at least 9,150 new and competing research project grants. This conflicts with a long standing and very dangerous budgeting practice of the NIH. When the NOH awards a five year grant, the finds for that grant are only budgeted as each fiscal year begins. As a result a mandate like this may mean that the only way the NIH can meet the requorement is by cutting existing grants. Even though thsi may make sense to a non scientist. it makes no sense in the real world. A five year grant often has contractual requirements or may require that certain things be done in a specific year. For example, a fouth year budget may already only have the funds needed to run commercial analyses of samples gathered in years 1 to 3. An across the board cut of isting grants can mean that the money already spent is now wasted.
2. 90 percent of the NIH budget could go to extramural activities and 10 percent to intramural activities. Many of us feel the intramural program is uncompetitive and should be cut back. However, this is hard to do for several reasons. First, the congress people who represent Bethesda have a powerful voice. Second, a large part of the intramural budget goes to scientists who have employment rights under civil service. Third, a portion of he intramural money goes to clinical enter work in Bethedsda that is essential if NIH is to fulfill Congrsses other mandates for translational medicine.
3. The bill leaves out any mention of Director Francis Collin’s proposal to support translational medicine. The bill leaves out any mention of his plan to create the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences to replace the National Center for Research Resources, though the Senate is likely to make changes to the bill to reintroduce a provision for NCATS and the Cures Acceleration Network, which was also left out of the House bill.
4. The bill does not empower the NIH with authority to set priorities. Science, esp. biology, offers exponentially increasing needs for money because the mroe we know the more we can ask about issues important to health. The NIH itself, however, is a colelction of Institutes set up by Congress largely to reflect constituencies for one or another disease. As money tightens, someone is going to need to decide how much do we allocate to sickle cell disease vs. Alheimer’s.