WASHINGTON – Rather than serve up across-the-board cuts mandated by sequestration that would slice deeply into the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget, Congress needs to be more selective when carving out savings, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) said at a United for Medical Research (UMR) policy briefing in Washington last week.Mixing in a morality argument, Bilbray added, "For this city to accept across-the-board cuts regardless of what's going on would be as outrageous as any father or mother" employing the same strategy with the household budget.

Sometimes we can avoid irritation in our work lives, sometimes not. Sept. 20 was a day when some pretty annoying themes crept back into my workday via coverage of a session dealing with the NIH budget. Regular readers of the MDD Perspectives blog know this is something of a pet peeve of mine, but when one considers the laggardly budget at FDA, the NIH budget discussion is nothing short of mind-numblingly over the top. To wit: During a Sept. 20 press briefing at the National Press Club, Rep. Ed Markey said the prospect of 8-10% cuts to the NIH budget...

There’s a lot of consternation and maybe even a little constipation of late about the U.S. federal budget, and rightly so. If the White House and Congress can’t come to some resolution about budget sequestration, the FDA budget could tighten enough that user fees would disappear, which would cripple the agency. Complicating matters further is the series of tax issues – a convergence dubbed the fiscal cliff – that ripen at the end of this year, giving everyone inside the Beltway more to worry about. This is all difficult enough without an election, so it’s easy to be pessimistic. And...