washington

Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, last week joined a growing band of prominent politicians calling for a doubling of government spending on biological and biomedical research.

Addressing a meeting in Georgia on women's health issues, Gingrich, the senior Republican in the House, said that such a move would contribute towards “the explicit goal of making the United States the primary producer of health care information in the world”.

But, he added, reaching that goal should include a “dramatic overhaul” of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which he said should be more transparent and more aggressive in using information technologies to publicize its work. “People ought to be able to get information faster and more openly,” said Gingrich.

“I want the National Institutes of Health to become much more of an Internet and information-age-oriented system with a total transparency so that people can know what's being applied for, what's available, what kind of research is going on.”

Gingrich said that a maximum of 18 months should elapse before doctors are told about new treatments and drugs. He proposed an Internet site continually updated to give push-button access to new scientific and medical information.

Diane Wax, director of legislative activities at NIH, says the agency is already making more medical information available to doctors and patients through the Internet. “We're doing much more than he's aware of.” But, she adds, with millions of people not owning computers, “we can't make the Internet the only source of information for the public”.