It’s Crazy
President Reagan has under consideration the “privatization” of the National Institutes of Health. We are astonished. We cannot imagine how such a reorganization might be justified.
The venerable research institution has a global reputation both for the work accomplished on its own campus in Bethesda, Md., and for the even more extensive research carried on in other laboratories under NIH contracts. Like any large enterprise, NIH has elements that can be improved and strengthened. But its most recent problem has flowed from Reagan’s efforts to curtail its budget. Fortunately, Congress has prevailed in blocking those ill-advised efforts and in providing more generous support.
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget seem to have contrived the reorganization as a means of attracting additional foundation and industry funding into what would become a research university. Federal support would be maintained, they say, but federal responsibility would--it seems to us--become elusive, and the risks of deteriorating funding would become greater. Experts in the field report no substantial resources in the private sector for the basic, fundamental research for which NIH is famous. The payoff is simply too distant to interest private firms.
A justification of the reorganization is that it would lift salary ceilings for superstar researchers. The recent restlessness of Dr. Robert Gallo, the NIH researcher who was a co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, has been cited. Presumably, in a differently organized environment, Gallo’s wanderlust could be controlled by higher pay and looser controls. But this sort of flexibility could perfectly well be provided within the existing institution without tearing it apart.
The New York Times, which uncovered the plan, reports that the Office of Management and Budget believes that a further advantage would be to expose the NIH to more competition with public and private universities and presumably also with industry researchers. In fact, NIH would benefit from applying to its intramural work the same stringent peer review that applies to its extramural grants, but that could be arranged without dismembering the institution.
There is a philosophical suspicion on the part of Reagan of anything to do with government, and that may be behind this idea. The success, efficiency and balance of NIH, which already complements its own work with contracts in private and public laboratories around the nation, may be galling to someone who thinks that only the marketplace can produce effective work. Too much is at risk, however, to let ideology rule on this question.
The breakup of NIH would inevitably destroy it. The superstars who have guided its work would quickly depart, leaving the operation to mediocre survivors, and there would be no resources equal to creating another great research institution like Rockefeller University in New York.
NIH has played a critical role in this nation’s achievement of preeminence in biotechnology. To tamper with NIH would be to place at risk that leadership position.
