With friends like these....

At a time where science, and indeed even knowledge and learning, is under attack by various malicious and ignorant and fundamentalist factions, we really do not need the head of the NIH to say this....“We’re not the National Institutes of Basic Sciences,” he said. “We’re the National Institutes of Health.”

This could only serve to reinforce the lay person's erroneous notion that basic research is an 'ivory tower' activity with no naturally consequent practical applications. What needs to be said prominently and repeatedly is that open and unfettered basic research (and often serendipitous discovery) drives most of the advances in medicine and health care. And that, as a nation, we should find a way to increase the NIH budget for basic research by at least 5% on an annual basis.

By the way, I am all for "considering clinical and therapeutic implications in their work"; as a matter of fact, I am involved in the process of furthering the conversion of one bit of science into, hopefully, a couple of bits of technology. But where is the money for this fine notion going to come from? Even the NIH SBIR program, which is really a lifeline for small companies that are too early for venture funding, has been somewhat hijacked. The rules have now been changed such that large, venture-backed companies can now compete for this line of funding---this sounds great on paper "Hey, let's fund the stuff that is closer to market" etc, but in reality it is only going to subsidize the risk assumed by venture capital firms and pass that risk onto the taxpayer. Now vulture capitalists can own more of your stuff, that they can strategically sacrifice in their "exit strategies" aka "take the money and run", for even lesser investment on their part. At the same time this kills small companies that actually operate in that difficult and vital space between the "piece of cool datum from university lab" and "stuff that a vulture capitalist will want to own for pennies on the dollar".

So you want to make an overt PR push to "take lab science and make it relevant to health", great. I'm on board. Now show us the money, boss.

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