The Bush administration has drafted a broad strategic plan that sets new priorities for the government`s vast biomedical research efforts, which until now have proceeded along paths chosen by individual scientists and research institutions.
The government plan is intended to channel $9 billion in federal money to areas Washington deems critical to the nation`s health, while for the first time also trying to insure that American medical re-search remains
economically competitive.
The plan has alarmed many scientists, who say it gives the government too big a role in defining priorities and places too much emphasis on the commercial exploitation of their work. These scientists say Washington is trying to set a national industrial policy.
But in an interview, Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health and the principal architect of the new plan, said, ”I don`t understand why industrial policy is such a bad word.”
If scientists and the NIH do not set clear priorities, she added, Congress and other outsiders will do so.
The strategic plan is intended to bring order to the network of research units that make up the NIH, through which the government finances research on cancer, heart disease, AIDS, diabetes, arthritis, stroke and scores of other illnesses.
It is also intended to clarify research goals to ensure that the government gets a high return on its investment of $9 billion a year. Eighty percent of that money goes through the NIH to private researchers around the country.
Among the plan`s stated goals is to expand biomedical and related sciences ”in order to enhance the nation`s economic well-being.”
The plan, for example, says that such fields as biotechnology, molecular medicine, immunology and vaccine development should be favored because these areas offer ”substantial contributions to the enhancement of the nation`s economic growth, productivity and competitiveness.”
Biotechnology sales in the United States totaled $4 billion last year and are expected to reach $50 billion by the year 2000, analysts at Ernst & Young say.
But Dr. William D. Terry, senior vice president at Brigham and Women`s Hospital in Boston, expressed the concern of many scientists that government direction could have adverse effects.
”Unless you assure continued support for high-quality fundamental basic research, there is a potential for killing the goose that has laid many thousands of golden eggs,” Terry said.
