In Reply I agree with Dr Moye's point that it is important that the business of research be a smaller proportion of the NIH dollars. But it cannot simply be that research institutions absorb more costs. The NIH too must try to streamline the paperwork and bureaucracy of actually receiving a grant and complying with all of its requirements. This would be consistent with President Obama's executive order to reduce the burden of regulations. Mr Ma asserts NIH funding is such a small proportion of biomedical research funding that it is not responsible for much of the costly technology that drives up health care costs. If true, this claim would undermine the very argument to increase NIH funding. Assuming Ma's viewpoint, opponents of NIH funding could argue that because the NIH covers such a minor part of biomedical research funding overall, cutting it will not hinder the important progress of medicine. In other words, NIH funding could be cut without worrying that new discoveries will be foregone. This seems a terrible defense of NIH funding. In addition, I did not argue that the NIH should focus only on funding research into cost-lowering advances. Instead I argued that cost-lowering advances should be part of the NIH focus in a way that it has never been. It currently plays no role in deciding what research projects to fund. My view is that it ought to be a criterion in evaluating grants for funding moving forward.
展开▼
