IF THE INTRAMURAL research program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Md, is to continue to attract high-quality scientists and retain leadership in biomedical research, changes need to be made.
This is the message delivered by an Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC) committee that was asked to look into the program. The committee, chaired by Harold T. Shapiro, PhD, president of Princeton (NJ) University, urged both Congress and the administration to act.
The Next Step
Having pronounced the dire warnings, the next step is to get at least some of the recommendations implemented. "We're having a dialogue with the staff at the Office of Management and Budget," says the Institute of Medicine's president, Samuel Thier, MD.With a current budget of $700 million, only 11% of the total NIH budget, the intramural program is small by Washington standards. But its facilities include the clinical center where researchers and