OTA DEAD; FDA TO CENTRALIZE CAMPUS* The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment(OTA) is dead. House-Senate conferees late Thursdayagreed to an appropriations bill for the legislative branchthat terminated all funding for OTA effective Sept. 30,1995. Some 200 staffers will be out of work. OTA wascreated by Congress more than a decade ago to advise iton scientific policy and technology issues.

* The idea of a central campus for the FDA, much likethe one occupied by the National Institutes of Health inBethesda, has been revived in Congress. Because theSenate last week approved a fiscal 1996 appropriationsbill that contains $67 million in planning money toconsolidate the far-flung FDA operations, theadministration now has some cash to come up withanother plan to centralize all FDA offices on one piece ofland. The first consolidation plan, which would havegathered most FDA offices in Clarksburg, Md., wasoverturned when President Clinton last week signedlegislation striking the planning money for the Clarksburgmove from the fiscal 1995 federal budget. The Senate, atthe urging of Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), wants theFDA to consider an old naval facility at White Oak, Md.,as a possible site for a consolidated campus. _ MicheleL. Robinson

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