Sare

OR THE SECOND TIME in two years, the “political”

leaders of the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare “downtown” ‘have fired the supposedly “non-
political” director of the National Institutes of Health
“uptown” in Bethesda. After only 18 months at NIH, Dr.
Robert S. Stone, formerly of the University of New Mex-
ieo, has been asked to look for another job, reportedly
because like his predecessor, Dr. Robert Q. Marston, he
resisted drastic cuts in medical research. “The scientific
community has got to get its head out of the clouds and
begin to live in the real world where funds of all kinds
are limited,” said Dr. Charlés G. Edwards, the assistant
secretary of HEW who did the firing (and who has since
resigned ‘himself to join a medical supply manufacturing
“company ). But the scientists at NIH say that is not quite
the issue.

The issue that seems to keep NIH in a state of demoral-
ized turmoil is not that scientists are unable to accept
less research money, but that they are unwilling to accept
more “unwarranted and counterproductive political con-
trol,” as six of them, including four Nobel prize winners,
put it the other day. They don’t question that the na-
tion’s health services must be improved, that there are
too few family doctors and too many super-specialists
and that a well-functioning national health insurance
plan still needs a lot of thought and fact-finding.

But scientists do question almost unanimously that
creative medical research in a given field can be pro-
duced by “good management” like so many rolls of band-
ages, as the political appointees in HEW’s “downtown”

NIH and the Keal World a Dee

fret

offices seem to believe. The scientists feel that exclu-
sively “‘mission-oriented research” can be as wasteful as
some uncomprehefiding administrators consider “basic
research” to be.

The trouble at NIH, as Washington Post staff writer
Stuart Auerbach reported last Thursday, is that vital

' research projects are stifled because too much money 4s

|
\

spent on politically popular priorities set by the White
House budget men, HEW officials and Congress.

Most scientists agree that they cannot live in splendid
isolation from the rest of the nation, its needs and its
political and economic problems. But they do consider -
themselves qualified to participate in the decisions
about ‘the specific areas,. methods and priorities of
investigation their science ought to pursue in order to
obtain the most promising results. They also feel that
scientists, perhaps through the National Academy of
Science, should have a voice in nominating the director
of NIH, who is appointed by the President. He should
be, they say, a respected scientist who understands the
problems and working methods of the National Insti-
tutes and is able to represent them “downtown” and
before Congress.

We find this position entirely reasonable and construc-
tive and we deplore the continuing turmoil within the
nation’s foremost medical research institution. We hope
that President Ford will replace Dr. Stone and Dr. Ed-
wards with persons able to restore morale and re-
establish confidence between the “uptown” scientists
and the “downtown” administrators.