THIS is getting ridiculous. President Bush is proposing a nearly 16 per cent
increase in the budget of the National Institutes of Health for next year. That
will bring the agency鈥檚 total budget to $27.3 billion, a sizeable boost
by anybody鈥檚 standards. The NIH is one of the few federal agencies (apart from
the Defense Department) to see any kind of budget increase, given the War on
Terrorism. And yet, more than a year after taking over the White House, the Bush
administration has yet to name a director for the agency it is lavishing money
on.
Some of the reasons for the delay are understandable鈥攚ell, sort of. The
President apparently didn鈥檛 want to name an NIH director until he had made his
decision about whether to allow federal funds to be spent on human embryonic
stem cell research. Since most biomedical scientists seem to believe that the
government should fund such research, it鈥檚 easy to see why it would have been
hard to recruit a director with Bush hanging fire on that decision.
That roadblock was removed on 9 August, when the President said some
embryonic stem cell research would be allowed. True, the 11 September attack
threw all government activities into turmoil . . . but as an excuse for each and
every delay, it鈥檚 wearing a little thin. Earlier this year it looked like
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID), would be handed the top job at NIH, but something apparently
scotched the deal at the last moment.
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So as things stand, we鈥檝e got a federal agency with boatloads of money, but
nobody鈥檚 hand on the tiller. It seems a strange way to do things.
IN TRUTH, Fauci may be better off without the NIH director鈥檚 job. Although
the President鈥檚 new budget for the institutes is pretty generous to the
biomedical community, the money is not being doled out equally to all the hungry
researchers. Few of the agencies in the NIH will be getting boosts of more than
a few per cent. The National Cancer Institute will receive 12 per cent, but
that鈥檚 at the high end. No, the big winner this year is Fauci鈥檚 own NIAID,
scheduled to net a whopping 57 per cent boost. Since directors of the individual
agencies tend to have a lot more say in how their institutes are run, Fauci will
have greater control over the $4 billion coming to NIAID than he would
have had over the entire NIH budget.
And why is the institute getting this pot of gold? To combat terrorism: the
NIAID has emerged as the lead civilian agency for the study of deadly microbes.
But does this mean Fauci will be blamed for any future bioterrorist attacks?
That wouldn鈥檛 be fair, of course. But then Washington doesn鈥檛 always play
fair.
LONG-HAUL travel had been far from my thoughts until the other day, when I
saw this press release. 鈥淔ormer astronaut Aldrin, Purdue engineers planning Mars
hotels.鈥� Aldrin is, of course, Buzz鈥攐ne of the first American astronauts.
Purdue is Purdue University in Indiana. Mars, of course, is the fourth planet
from the Sun.
Aldrin wants to design a new class of spacecraft that would perpetually
cruise between Earth and Mars. The release goes on to promise that these
鈥渃ycler鈥� spacecraft would enable Earthlings to explore the Red Planet and
develop it commercially. They would act as 鈥渟pace hotels鈥�, say the sponsors.
They鈥檝e appealed to NASA to take up their offer. NASA isn鈥檛 doing too well
lately in Washington. The International Space Station is, as always, drawing
fire for overspending. NASA fought and lost a battle to keep a paying tourist
off it. And Bush鈥檚 latest budget puts the brakes on new spending for just about
anything not related to terrorism or kick-starting the flagging economy.
But Aldrin and his optimistic colleagues suggest that building space hotels
shuttling between Earth and Mars would be good for the economy. And cheap. For
example, they suggest that the space shuttle drop off its external fuel tanks
while in orbit and leave them there, where they could be turned into parts for
the cycler craft.