Biomedical Research Enters the Steady State

Abstract

Two and a half years ago, when I was still a private citizen working at the University of California, San Francisco, my colleagues, Mike Bishop and Marc Kirschner, and I offered advice to our new President in Science magazine.1 The first of our 11 recommendations was to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by 15 percent per year, in order to double the NIH budget in five years and restore the success rate for grant applications to at least 30 percent. A year later, just after I had been called to Washington to work for that President. © 1995, Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.