Bang for the Buck

摘要

Much of the nearly $3 billion the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends on HIV/AIDS research each year supports basic studies that may not yield insights for decades. But three relatively modest investments continue to advance the field in ways large and small, year after year. Together, they consume about $20 million a year-not even 1% of the entire budget-and help thousands of researchers around the world at no cost. "I think of these three as the gifts that keep on giving," says Anthony Fauci, head of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland, which funds these projects.