January 12, 2011
I talk a bit about the National Institutes of Health –NIH [http://www.nih.gov/]– in the chapter, “What’s politics got to do with it?” The various institutes and centers in NIH [http://www.nih.gov/icd/index.html] give a sense of where and about what issues, conditions, disease — such as the eye institute, the national cancer institute, the institue on aging, the heart lung & blood institute to name a few — decisions will be made regarding research and federal funding for the research. The Office for Research on Women’s Health, formed in 1990, assures that efforts will be made to include rather than exclude women from medical research [http://orwh.od.nih.gov/about.html].
The federal budget continues to include significant expenditures for NIH, with President Obama seeking to bring the 2011 budget to 32 billion [ http://www.aacr.org/home/public–media/science-policy–government-affairs/aacr-cancer-policy-monitor/aacr-cancer-policy-monitor—february-2010/white-house-proposes-to-increase-nih-budget-by-$1-billion.aspx]. As citizens, we should take a look at these decisions and realize that the ways that NIH organize predict the research that will be done…
