Winds of change, clouds of smoke

Dear US presidential candidates, we know you have a fair amount on your respective plates right now, but we'd like to voice some thoughts on science that we hope you will take into your presidency.As the avid readers of Nature Medicine we presume you to be, you will be aware of some of the key issues we support: financing the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to ensure long-term consistent growth of the NIH budget and expanded support of biomedical research; reforming the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore both its efficacy in doing its job and its independence from the perceived influence of big pharma; reinstating the position of the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to facilitate sound—not ideology-driven—science decisions; and federally funding embryonic stem cell research and establishing regulation for its oversight to enable its future contribution to disease cures and regenerative medicine.

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