National Institutes of Health, regular research projects and intramural research, by Institute, fiscal year 1963

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. We are very much gratified by your statement outlining the responsibilities of your office in giving help.

I do want to express to you the thanks of our committee of accepting the invitation to testify because I know how busy your schedule is and how difficult it is to arrange a date.

Now, it is not every day that our committee has an opportunity to hear from an eminent scientist. In your case, you combine the sciences and the experiments; therefore, your testimony is particularly welcome, and I am sure it will be most helpful to us.

Our committee faces a big problem in this legislation and I am most interested in learning that your office has scheduled a major study of the research problems of the National Institutes of Health.

I do not want to anticipate in any way this study, but I am wondering whether you agree that in connection with the research programs of the National Institutes of Health we here in the Congress are faced with a difficult problem.

The problem as I see it, is how we, as laymen, can evaluate the achievements and programs. What should our policies be in regard to these programs?

As a result of some of the criticisms which have been leveled against the administration of these programs, the National Institutes of Health has issued a new grant manual which requires a stricter accounting on the part of the grantees. Now, since the manual was issued, of course, we have received quite a number of communications criticizing the manual as limiting unduly the freedom of the research on the ideas.

There is also criticism of the requirement that the researcher whose salary is paid 100 percent by the National Institutes of Health may not teach because his time should be devoted 100 percent to the research for which he is paid by the National Institutes of Health.

On the other hand, there has been some criticism that the same scientists who have urged over the years increased appropriations for research in particular areas then served as members of the advisory councils of the National Institutes of Health in passing on the research grants, and finally these same scientists ended up with substantial grants for conducting the research in these areas.

My question is: Do you feel that this kind of procedure is likely to inspire confidence on the part of the American people in the integrity of the research grant programs?

What can you in the scientific community contribute toward reestablishing confidence in the administration of this program which must be reestablished or else we will very likely face annually the kind of situation which we here in the Congress experienced in the case of the foreign aid appropriations where a few of us had not any confidence in it, that the appropriations are being handled with any degree of competence and integrity.

Now, I realize this question has many ramifications and that you probably will not be able to go into all of them. However, I wonder whether you will be willing to take a stab at answering the question, and you are free to add to your answer in writing any material that you desire.

In any event, I would like to express the hope that your study will go into this question in depth so that we may have the benefit of your study on this important matter.

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Dr. WIESNER. I will try, and if I omit an answer to certain aspects of that question, it is because I have forgotten and please call it to my attention when I finish.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. All right.

Dr. WIESNER. First of all, I would like to say that the scientific community itself, and certainly my office, has very considerable confidence in the administration of the National Institutes of Health.

Now, I don't want to anticipate our study, for there may prove to be areas where one should be critical and maybe different forms of administrative arrangements will be necessary. But ordinarily when programs are poorly administered, or are inadequate, or there is slackness in the management, the word gets around pretty fast in the scientific community. There have been programs, and there may even be some today, in which the scientists themselves are very critical of the administration of the program. This is not true of the National Institutes of Health. The Institutes are held in very high esteem by most of the scientific community. There has been, as you indicate, some criticism of their recent activities by the scientific community, and I will come to that aspect of it later.

In regard to your first question-How can you in the Congress convince yourselves that the programs are sound, that the expenditures of these large sums of money are justified?-it seems likely that there should be continued growth in a number of areas of health which are not now adequately funded. For example, Congress saw fit to extend considerably the research activities in mental retardation and mental health and in the field of Asian flu in which there is little research and it is very likely that we will want to do additional work.

However, your mention of the environmental pollutants problem which was so dramatically brought to your attention in our pesticides report, highlights the fact that the country supports very little toxological research. So there are, in spite of this vast NIH program, still a variety of important areas about which the Nation should be concerned that are yet to be tackled.

In any event, the problem here is not at all unlike the problem the Congress has with any other field of science. An exception is the field of atomic energy, in which case the problem is the responsibility of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee and through the years it has come to know a great deal about the research program in that field. Conceivably, a committee could devote itself solely to health problems of the Nation and through the years get to know the research programs in this area. It would take a continuing and major effort to do this with a field as broad as health research. Very few congressional committees have so limited a responsibility that they can afford the time that would be required to become substantially expert in these fields.

Now, in defense research, atomic energy research, space research and basic sciences supported by the Science Foundation, the Congress has exactly the same problem: How can you tell that the money is being properly used?

I will go a step further. The executive branch of the Government has the same problem. Before I certify to the President that the National Institutes of Health program or some other research program is

sound, how can I obtain a sufficient amount of information to be able to really say this with some conviction?

In many areas in the field of defense, where we have spent years in the President's Science Advisory Committee building a background, we are really in the same fortunate position that I said the Joint Atomic Energy Committee is. In addition, my office has very substantial capabilities in many fields of science. In other fields, we have been building up such capabilities. In particular, concerning the health program, in the last 2 or 3 years there have been people on the staff studying these activities. We now have a pretty good understanding in our office for the general activities of the National Institutes of Health but I could not certify with any degree of confidence that a specific program area, unless it had been looked at by chance, was well balanced.

After we finish the study which the President has directed, we will be in a position to make much better judgments and we will be in a position to advise not only the President but the Congress.

One of the more important aspects of the creation of the Office of Science and Technology, which was essentially just making permanent the staff that has been built up around the special assistant to the President for science and technology, was that in providing a statutory organization it became possible for the Director and other members of the staff to testify before the Congress. This past year has been the first year that a person in my position has been able to do that. As we acquire understanding and information, we will make that available to you and this should be helpful.

Mr. BROTZMAN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. Yes.

Mr. BROTZMAN. What, specifically, did the President direct you to ascertain?

Dr. WIENER. Well, we are going to make a review of the areas of research in the National Institutes of Health program, to try to get a feeling for the details of as many of the individual research activities as possible.

We probably won't go into intensive detail on all of them. That would take too long. We are going to try to devise, working with the National Institutes of Health staff, a sampling procedure so that we can end up with a judgment about the quality of the research activities, both within the Government and the research that is supported outside. In addition, we hope to make a judgment about the balance of research between the fields; that is, whether our individual problems are being tackled on a scale that is commensurate with their importance.

Mr. BROTZMAN. Who has the feeling for the details now in this area? Dr. WIESNER. You mean independent of the committee?

Mr. BROTZMAN. Yes.

Dr. WIESNER. Well, the National Institutes of Health are in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

First of all, the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service and the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare within the Department have a responsibility, and within the Executive Office my Office has had a responsibility for advising the President on the value and merits of these programs.

You see, the Office of Science and Technology is new and we are just now developing procedures and means for making such judgments. This is our first major effort in the health field.

Mr. BROTZMAN. The National Institutes of Health are under your

Dr. WIESNER. The National Institutes of Health are under the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. I have no operating responsibility for them. You see, I am a member of the President's staff, but with responsibility for giving him advice and assistance in all fields of science and research. Medical affairs constitute one of the fields that we are continually concerned with.

Mr. BROTZMAN. See if I can get this in my mind.

I don't mean to detract from the colloquy of your testimony, but do I understand that on behalf of the Chief Executive you are to look this whole program over and see if it has direction; you are trying to get a feeling for detail is your exact purpose?

Dr. WIESNER. Mr. Congressman, before you came in, I gave a brief description of the purposes of setting up my office.

One of the important motivations for its inception was the fact that as the research and development programs of the Government have grown from $100 million 10 or 15 years ago to $14 or so billion today, they have changed from an area that really did not require very serious Chief Executive attention to one of his most serious problems. About a third of the expendable budget which is not fixed costs of doing Government business is expended in the research and development field; and while they have great confidence in all the agencies, the Presidents have found they have a need for somebody who is essentially on their own team who can give independent technical judgments and help make independent allocations. Obviously, any good secretary or any good director of an officer is a proponent of his program; if he does not believe in it, he should not be there. The President needs somebody who can provide him some independent balance, and my Office has been set up to do that in all the fields of science.

We are talking today about one very important one; the field of health research.

Mr. BROTZMAN. What is your relation to the Federal Council for Science and Technology?

Dr. WIESNER. I am the Chairman of the Federal Council.

You see, the Federal Council for Science and Technology consists of the principal highest ranking scientific officer in each of the eight or nine agencies that have most of the Federal research and develop

ment.

For example, Chairman Seaborg of the Atomic Energy Commission sits on the Federal Council; Dr. Harold Brown who is Director of Defense Research and Engineering sits on the Federal Council, as well as a number of other such people.

We like to call the Federal Council a sort of subcabinet for science although it is not formally designated that. We deal with interagency problems of science and technology, interagency coordination. Mr. BROTZMAN. Thank you.

Mr. ROGERS of Florida. How often does your Council meet?

Dr. WIESNER. It depends on the problems that we deal with. It is supposed to meet once a month; it generally meets twice a month.