A Lonely Fight: This Republican Has Ideas On NIH Spending, But Not Many Like-Minded Allies
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) wants to shake up the agency by cutting indirect costs and using the savings to fund thousands of research projects instead. Meanwhile, scientists are wary of proposed federal funding caps for grants to individual labs.
Stat:
In Congress, Former Scientist Wants To Change How The NIH Does Business
[Rep. Andy] Harris is without question uniquely knowledgeable on NIH issues. He is a former Johns Hopkins research physician whose work the agency funded for a decade. One study, on the “cerebrovascular effects of intravenous dopamine infusions in fetal sheep,” is published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. He has also kept a close eye on the federal government’s research arm. But in the months following President Trump’s inauguration, he has pursued what is perhaps an unexpected mission given his background: changing the way the NIH spends its money. (Facher, 6/8)
Boston Globe:
Local Scientists Worry About NIH’s Proposed Cap On Funding For Individual Labs
Doug Melton, one of the nation’s top stem cell scientists, juggles research and other programs at his Harvard University lab, which is funded by a half-dozen grants from the National Institutes of Health — the federal agency that has long been the engine for US biomedical research. But like other senior scientists in the Boston area, he stands to lose some of that funding under a proposed NIH cap on the number of grants it awards to individual labs. (Weisman, 6/7)
