Harvard prez says NIH funding system is broken

Harvard President Drew Faust has crunched the numbers on NIH funding of extramural research programs and concludes that the government-backed system to support biotech research efforts is broken. Out of the 47,455 grant requests made in the last fiscal year, only 10,100 were funded by NIH, says Faust. And that represented less than $4 billion of the NIH's $28 billion budget.

"The responses to rejected grants are downsized labs, lay-offs of post docs, slipping morale, and more conservative science that shies away from the big research questions," Faust told lawmakers. "Today, China, India, Singapore and others have adopted biomedical research and the building of biotechnology clusters as national goals. Suddenly, those who train in America have significant options elsewhere."

- read the report [1] in Genetic Engineering

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