House Appropriations Hearing: NCI Requests $61 Million Increase; Asks for $2.2 Billion

Extract

Rep. John Porter (R-IIl.) opened the National Cancer Institute's FY 1998 appropriation hearing Feb. 26, by stating that he and his colleagues had agreed to forego the customary round of opening remarks to allow more time for discussion with the NCI Director, Richard Klausner, M.D. As a result, the early portion of the hearing was predominantly a dialogue about screening mammography, with several members of the subcommittee expressing a desire for clarity in NCI's recommendations.

Budget Request

NCI's budget request for FY 1998 is $2.217 billion, an increase of $61 million over 1997. These numbers do not include NCI's share of dollars supporting AIDS research; those funds will be appropriated to the National Institutes of Health Office of AIDS Research for distribution back to the institutes according to research priorities established by OAR.

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Moving beyond the issue of mammography, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) asked about NCI research on other detection technologies. Klausner described some of the other promising technologies under development such as digital mammography, MRI, and PET. He informed the subcommittee that he is in the process of assembling a “think tank” of experts in imaging technology to develop a broad research agenda for imaging research.