NIH chief outlines payback on $10B research bonanza

The NIH grabbed $10 billion of taxpayers' funds funneled through the stimulus bill, and NIH chief Francis Collins says the money was used to save or create 50,000 research jobs. In many cases, he adds, the extra funds have kept America's scientists in American labs.

Those "are high-paying, quality jobs that are employing people with considerable skills that we'd hate to see migrating overseas," Collins says in an interview with Science. "After five years of flat funding between 2003 and 2008, where NIH effectively lost about 15 percent of its buying power, the community has been exhilarated. We're going to see acceleration in both the basic and the clinical aspects of biomedical research."

The NIH's grant awards are motivated by three key goals: Aiding drug development, pushing research into rare and neglected diseases, and cutting healthcare costs.

Earlier in 2009 Science also detailed the frenzied quest for federal research funds, noting that thousands of grant applications poured into the NIH after Congress authorized the additional spending. The University of California in Irvine alone filed more than 200 grant applications. And some critics have noted that the NIH's grants rarely fund a successful research project, raising concerns that the money is largely wasted.

- here's the story from Bloomberg

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