Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing for the 2012 NIH budget. Really bad budget times with the feeling that we are doing really well with only a 1.9% increase from 2011 for the PB. Republicans (most Tea Party people) trying to cut discretionary spending back to 2008 level, which would be devastating for NIH. Francis Collins trying to push the NCATS (National Center for Advancing Translational Science). I think this is a big mistake (“everybody wants to be somebody”). This is no time to initiate this, but some of the pols, some in the scientific community who are clueless, and others think this is a good idea. Harold Varmus and I have grave reservations about this (me particularly) since I believe that it will have the unintended consequence of sucking money away from standard NIH research to out into a Center that is Francis’s baby. We are already doing $6 Billion in translational research at NIH.