NIH Budget News; PubChem

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Of possible interest.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 05:30:20 -0400
From: Steve Heller <steve@HELLERS.COM>
Reply-To: CHEMICAL INFORMATION SOURCES DISCUSSION LIST
     <CHMINF-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
Subject: [CHMINF-L] US House vote on PubChem

From:

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/610/1

June 10, 2005

House Approves 0.5% Raise for NIH

A House panel yesterday approved a 0.5% increase in the 2006 budget for
the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The $142.3 million increase, to
$28.5 billion, matches the Bush Administration's request. The modest rise
falls far short of biomedical inflation of over 3%, say biomedical
research supporters. Representative Dave Obey (D-WI), who voted against
the bill, predicted that it would lead to fewer new grants. 

"We are concerned about the momentum of biomedical research being affected
by this,"  says Jon Retzlaff, legislative relations director for the
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Supporters hope
that the Senate panel, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), will
continue its track record of bestowing more generous increases on NIH. The
Senate panel could mark up its bill as soon as July.

The House subcommittee also appears to have sided with NIH in its fight
with the American Chemical Society (ACS) over PubChem, a new NIH database
holding data on biologically active chemicals. ACS contends that PubChem
duplicates its own subscription-based chemical database. This spring, the
ACS attempted to persuade NIH to scale back its efforts (Science, 6 May
2005, p. 774) and took its case to subcommittee chair Ralph Regula (R-OH),
whose state is home to the headquarters of the ACS database.

In the end, a report accompanying the House bill does not ask the agency
to restrict the scope of the database, but instead "urges NIH to work with
private sector providers to avoid unnecessary duplication and competition
with private sector chemical databases." Supporters of PubChem see the
House language as a victory for NIH.

--JOCELYN KAISER

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