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Opinion

Nature 412, 361 (26 July 2001) | doi:10.1038/35086710

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The government's threat to suspend clinical trials at America's largest medical school highlights an impasse over funding.

Biomedical researchers in the United States were genuinely stunned last week to learn that the federal government was suspending the clinical research programmes at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, the largest academic medical centre in the country, and one of the most revered.The suspension announced by the fledgling Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) was condemned in unusually forthright terms by JHU researchers and administrators, who clearly felt that the government had overreached itself.