Only pandemic flu preparedness and biodefense emerged as clear winners from President Bush's dreary 2007 budget proposal, announced on 6 February. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration all face budgets that are either flat or lower than their 2006 numbers.

It's not just the funding that's tight,but rather that the culture of funding is changing. Joe Lipsick, Stanford University

The figures widen the gap that has emerged over the past six years between spending on research and development in defense- and non–defense-related areas.

At the NIH, budget constraints are expected to lead to a 1.7% drop in the total number of grants it can award. Despite the bleak outlook, NIH officials say the agency will increase the number of grants to new investigators.

Bush's fiscal proposal, if adopted, would mark the fourth straight year the NIH budget has remained flat, and scientists are worried. “I lived through a similar tightening of the NIH budget in the 1980s while starting my own lab,” says Joe Lipsick, a geneticist at Stanford University. “But it seems to me that this time around it's not just the funding that's tight, but rather that the culture of funding is changing. I'm not sure I'd advise my own kids to go into academic research these days.”

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