NIH To Award $1B To Young Researchers After Dropping Plan To Cap Support To Some Labs
The controversial proposal to limit the size of federal grants to individual labs raised concerns among senior scientists, so National Institutes of Health offered this compromise. Also in the news: a House panel is expected to again take up its investigation of a lab problem two years ago.
Stat:
NIH Drops Controversial Plan To Cap Funding For Individual Labs
Officials at the federal agency that funds medical research Thursday scrapped a controversial plan to free up money for young researchers by capping the amount of grant money it gives to individual labs. The proposal by the National Institutes of Health — which last year handed out nearly $25 billion in research awards to universities and hospitals across the country — came under fire from senior scientists who run labs that stood to lose funding. In its place, the NIH will establish new policies to boost support for early-career lab heads. (Weisman, 6/8)
The Wall Street Journal:
National Institutes Of Health To Boost Grants To Young Scientists
The National Institutes of Health said it would begin redirecting up to about $1.1 billion in research-grant money a year to early- and midcareer scientists to help boost their careers and preserve U.S. science. The agency said it would begin the redistribution immediately with about $210 million annually, but that the amount would steadily increase over five years to about $1.1 billion a year. (Burton, 6/8)
CQ Magazine:
NIH Drug Contamination Scandal Back Under The Microscope
The National Institutes of Health is facing scrutiny again from the House Energy and Commerce Committee over a scandal that occurred nearly two years ago at one of the agency’s main research institutions. In 2015, the Food and Drug Administration discovered two vials of a contaminated drug sample at the NIH Clinical Center’s Pharmaceutical Development Section scheduled to be used on human subjects. The agency suspended activity at the lab shortly after. The NIH has said no patients were harmed as a result of the tainted sample, but the discovery sparked national headlines and launched two separate congressional investigations. (Williams, 6/12)
