Congress, NIH clash on research issues

[Nottingham]

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Congress, NIH clash on research issues
By Katrina Woznicki
UPI Science News
Published 10/3/2003 11:35 AM
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Top officials of the National Institutes of Health, called before a congressional committee to testify about reshaping the agency's research structure, found the discussion turning quickly to other issues, such as the ethics of human cloning and the value of sexually explicit scientific studies.

Ostensibly, the hearing was called to examine the NIH's plans to overhaul its research structure. The 116-year-old federal agency serves as an umbrella overseeing multiple scientific centers spread out across the country.

Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH, told a joint Senate-House hearing how the current, but outdated and fragmented research structure could cost NIH, "the crown jewel of government," some of the advances it has made in biomedical research. Moreover, he said, failing to update research methods potentially could retard the NIH's capacity to remain on the cutting edge of biomedical discovery.

"The current structure of NIH, with its separately-funded institutes and centers, does not facilitate ... NIH initiatives," Zerhouni said at the hearing, which was hosted by the Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee of the Senate and the Energy and Commerce committee of the House.

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Waxman is really onto this! and Outsourcing jobs with taxpayers paying for it is really getting me ticked off

:bounce:

[pfitz59]

1. Don't trust a single Bush* appointee in NIH!

Their fundie-driven, politics-riven agenda will destroy the agency! Sex = verboten. Genetic research = verboten. Abstinence and chastity education = sehr gut!

[izzie]

2. I read a long time ago that only right wingers were getting jobs there.

These things have been going on for a long time. Look at schools and how they are run. Right wingers have been running this stuff for year. All I can say is it is hard to get us live and let live type out doing those things so it gets away from us.

[Beetwasher]

4. That would be tough

Especially for the guts of the NIH. Many of the people (if not all) in the crucial roles of the advisory committees that decide which projects get funded are scientists and in my experience less likely to be lockstep rightwingers. For the most part a scientist is more likely to do what's right for science. That's a good thing.

However, what they do do is appoint people like Janet Renqhist, who is not a scientist, as Inspector General at DHHS, which is an agency that is largely responsible for much of the oversight and policy for NIH. She did a lot of damage.

[Gman]

3. If Bush were to be elected next year, in 2005

the NIH will be directed to research and prove the superiority of the white race. Of course they will do this stuff in off election years. Then they'll deny they ever did this for the 2006 mid-term elections.

[schultzee]

5. Bu$hco wants to privatize it so it can cost more and not do its job

like everything else he privatizes.

[loudnclear]

6. NIH is and has been for the last 40 years a grand welfare state for the

Ivy League privileged academs. It's much too comoplicated to go into here, but much of the money goes to fat cats with political connections. The top NIH jobs are held by yet another branch of the AIPAC and much Israeli and Asian and Indian immigration takes place through special programs of the NIH under the guise of bringing in "excellent scientists" When in fact, most of these "scientists" spend their time behind big desks in fancy offices, travel world-wide at taxpayers expense as they conduct their own personal business, and otherwise spend time thwarting the funding for competive scientists who are not members of the "network." NIH is prime territory for any journalists worth half his or her salt who would investigate and report honestly.