Scientists and medical researchers have reason to smile a bit wider than usual: yesterday, as part of the $787 billion economic stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama, NIH was awarded $10 billion. This is a huge amount of money for the agency, which has seen flat funding for nearly six years, and it will surely benefit researchers here and around the country.
Last week, the New York Times ran an interesting piece on how Sen. Arlen Specter (R.-Penn.), a cancer survivor and long-time champion of the NIH, helped secure the big bucks for the agency. And today, in a Stanford Report Q&A, Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the Stanford medical school, talks about what these new dollars mean for science and the community at large.