Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The US House of Representatives on Friday passed a 2010 budget for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education that would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health by nearly $1 billion over its appropriation for 2009. The bill, which passed the house by a vote of 264 to 153, seeks an NIH appropriation for 2010 of $30.97 billion, which is an increase of $940 million over the 2009 level, excluding funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That increase also would boost NIH funding by $500 million over the $30.5 million asked for by President Barack Obama in his budget request. The bill also seeks $6.8 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an increase of $67 million over the 2009 appropriation and $38.4 million over the White House's 2010 request. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which supports increased funding for biomedical research , said passage of the bill makes it more like...

Life sciences will indeed receive a boost in funding in President-Elect Barack Obama's sprawling economic recovery plan, according to figures from the House Appropriations Committee released today. A statement from the committee says that the National Institutes of Health will get $2 billion, the National Science Foundation will receive $3 billion, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will get $462 million. As the 111th Congress squabbled over the finer points of the recovery package, science advocacy and trade organizations voiced their hopes and rallied their membership to ensure that research is not forgotten in the latest efforts to rally the flagging US economy. The figures put forth by the Appropriation Committee fall short of the wish lists put forth by many of these groups. The clearest voice clamoring for increased funding at government life science agencies has come from Research!America. The science advocacy group suggested that an infusion of $11.1 billion...