PITY the poor National Institutes of Health. The agency has seen its budget more than double in the past six years, from a mere $13 billion in 1997 to an estimated $27 billion this year. I say estimated because Congress still hasn’t passed a budget for the current fiscal year, which began last October.
Have other federal agencies seen anything like that kind of growth? No way! Is more biomedical research being done by more people in more places than ever before? You betcha! And yet the NIH and its friends are sad. President Bush is proposing a meagre 1.8…
