Youngsters are underfunded while elders are fully funded!!!!

         There was a post written by Andy Harris on New York Times opinion page about people who are underfunded by the National Institute of Health Services also known as N.I.H. The younger, brilliant whose ages are under 35 are not getting that much funded as those who are old and ages over 65, who can barely walk.

         The National Bureau of Economic Research from 2005 found that over 2000 Nobel Prize winners and other notable scientists in the 20th century came with the idea that led to their breakthrough. And most these peoples people age were between 35 and 39. The writer saw that most of the innovative thinking came from the young scientists. "Francis S. Collins, has spoken out about the foolishness of NOT investing in young scientists, and his organization has take some small steps to target the younger scientists." Well the result was that the first time grant recipients has stopped rising. And this problem is still going on and the N.I.H. doesn't have any serious plan on fixing it.

         In 1999 to 2003 doubled the N.I.H. budget due to fiscal years,, by $13.6 billion to $27.1 billion, and yet the percentage of grants going to first time recipients under 36 actually dropped, to 1.3 percent from 5 percent. There are other sources of funding, "but for many fields, particularly those that don't have immediate commercial applications or sex appeal for grant making nonprofit groups, the N.I.H. is vital source of money." We can never know what breakthroughs were missed because the young investigators were not provided with the resources necessary to get unique ideas over the last 15 years. "They might have had the idea that would have led to a cure of ovarian cancer, Alzheimer's disease or pediatric cardiomyopathy."

         Authors point is to call his colleagues in congress to push the N.I.H. to promote promising researchers who are in the prime of their careers. There are some suggestions that are given by the author were this can be improved. For one thing that we can do is eliminate a budget scheme, known as the "tap," that allows the Department of Health  and Human Services to shift money out of the N.I.H.  budget into other department efforts. The N.I.H. lost $700 million to the "tap" in 2013 ALONE. Congress should also approve that the median age of first research awards to new investigators be under 40 within 5 years, and under 38 within 10 years. "Failure to meet these benchmarks would result in penalties for the N.I.H., including possible funding cuts." "Doing a better job of targeting good researchers who are doing valuable work in the prime of their careers can ensure that taxpayer money is well spent, and that science as a whole continues to benefit us all."