Course correction
The following editorial appears in the November issue of Nature Medicine. Read more
The following editorial appears in the November issue of Nature Medicine. Read more
Bioethicists have long known about a potential regulatory loophole that excludes certain types of clinical trials from federal regulations designed to protect the safety of human research subjects in the US. However, the number of clinical trials that fell into this gap remained unknown. Now, a letter published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals just how many trials may fall outside federal government supervision at present. Read more
Most people stopped doubting the dangers of tobacco long ago. And yet, tobacco products continue to adorn the checkout kiosks of convenience stores and appear in the pages of magazines. The question is: which of these products should be allowed and which should not? It’s no longer a theoretical question: the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was granted the power to regulate these products four years ago. Read more
It’s an off year in the US election cycle, which means that neither the President nor most members of Congress will face the voters come November. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still cast a ballot this fall. Today, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston announced the finalists for the second annual BRIght Futures Prize, a $100,000 research contest in which the winner is decided by a public poll. Voting is now open through 21 November. Read more
Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted its first ‘breakthrough therapy designations’ to a pair of cystic fibrosis drugs (see Nat. Med. 19, 116–117, 2013). But since then, it’s been all about the cancer agents. Read more
The US National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)—the $2.4 billion branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) tasked with laying the foundation for research into disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention—has a new leader. Earlier today, the agency announced that Jon Lorsch, a biophysical chemist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, would become the new director, starting this summer. Read more
Less than a month from now, science advocates hope to bring thousands of people together on the Carnegie Library Grounds at Mt. Vernon Square in Washington, DC, to stand together in the Rally for Medical Research. The move is, in large part, a response to the latest development in the US budget battle, in which the government has implemented massive cuts, known as sequestration, to most federal programs starting 1 March. The sequestration’s $1.6 billion cut to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) translates to over 5 % spending cut to federally-funded medical research. These cuts come at a time when the NIH’s budget has been steadily declining for the past ten years. Read more
It was a single tweet. On 12 February, after US President Barack Obama made a subtle nod to a new neuroscience project in his annual State of the Union address, Francis Collins, director of the country’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), posted on the @NIHDirector Twitter feed: “Obama mentions the #NIH Brain Activity Map in #SOTU.” Instantly, scientists were buzzing with rumors that the Brain Activity Map could be the next moon shot, with a budget and timeline similar to the Human Genome Project. Read more
In the medical world, the term ‘sequestration’ is usually preceded by the word ‘pulmonary’ or ‘splenic’ and is used to describe rare diseases that are the focus of research grants funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). But sequestration has now taken on a new meaning. Read more
BANGALORE — A high-powered panel set up at the request of India’s Ministry of Finance is reviewing the work of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the country’s primary funding and coordinating body for biomedical research, based in New Delhi. Read more
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