Nurturing the scientific enterprise.

Abstract

The National Institutes of Health has given its highest priority to funding investigator-initiated projects and to minimizing year-to-year fluctuations in the number of new and competing awards. Adequate funding for centers, research contracts, intramural research, and training is also necessary for creation of the science base essential to sustaining the powerful momentum of recent progress. The important question for the future is whether the present system is sufficiently flexible and imaginative to keep pace with the contemporary revolution in science.