Are You Listening, Mr. President? : Bush needs to pick a new chief for National Institutes of Health

At a time when our nation faces its most formidable health challenges, the National Institutes of Health--the premier U.S. biomedical research facility--lacks a leader. The directorship, once considered among the most prestigious scientific jobs in the world, has been vacant for more than a year. Even more distressing: No prospect is in sight.

It seems the Bush Administration can’t even give the job away. It has bumbled the job search so badly since a Ronald Reagan appointee, Dr. James Wyngaarden, left in July, 1989, that most candidates now see the directorship as too political--a tool of the White House. Early on, some candidates were asked their views on abortion, the so-called litmus test. Considering the subject had little to do with running the NIH, candidates understandably were upset. William H. Danforth, chancellor of Washington University--whose brother, John, is Missouri’s Republican senator--angrily withdrew his name after such a query.

Although the Administration now insists it has dropped the litmus test, the resentment lingers. The scientific community widely opposes the Administration’s continued ban on federal funding for research using fetal tissue. Bush has shown little initiative in other health areas as well. The Food & Drug Administration, for example, has no leader despite the pressing need to expedite its drug-approval process to make experimental drugs available to critically ill cancer and AIDS patients.

Nine Democratic members of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over NIH, recently urged Bush to fill the NIH position. “The National Institutes of Health are too important to the health of the nation to permit the position of director to be trivialized by the political manipulations that have characterized the selection process up to this point,” their letter said. “We urge you to end the current disarray and petty machinations . . . . “

Are you listening, Mr. President?