Dissent in NIH's Ranks

Although NIH can legally abolish NCRR without going through SMRB, the board should be involved, Berg writes:

Given that this will be the first time an institute or center at the NIH has been abolished and the first time the SMRB process has been used to create a new center, the SMRB role here is more critical than at any other juncture. The precedent you are setting will be historic. I strongly urge the SMRB to recommend to the NIH Director, to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and to Congress that NCRR not be abolished at this time, pending an appropriately transparent process, following the principles outlined in the SMRB report, Deliberating Organizational Change and Effectiveness.

Berg also describes as an example "of how hasty the process has been" that in early February, NIH gave him about 24 hours to decide whether NIGMS should take over NCRR's Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program for states with relatively little NIH funding—"a large (>$200M), complicated program not closely related to our core mission." Berg agreed "with very little comfort that this was a sound decision."

This afternoon, in anticipation of an SMRB teleconference tomorrow on the reorganization, an NIH task force posted its latest model for breaking up NCRR. Besides getting the IDeA grants, NIGMS would also take on small-business grants and some technology programs.

Another change is that NIH no longer wants to put a large chunk of NCRR's programs in an "interim infrastructure unit" in the NIH director's office. Instead, many programs, including animal resources and shared instrumentation grants, will be part of a permanent-sounding "infrastructure entity." It is not clear whether this would be part of the director's office or a standalone center that would, in effect, look much like a smaller NCRR.