Chesley Bonestell, “The Exploration of Mars” (1953), oil on board, 143/8 x 28 inches, gift of William Estler, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Reproduced courtesy of Bonestell LLC.

Call for More Health Funding

March 26, 2015

Government funding for the National Institutes of Health should be roughly doubled during the next budget cycle, with an accompanying set of reforms to guide its operation, Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, declared in the New York Times. In Issues, a policy analyst at Duke University has examined the forces behind the ups and downs of NIH funding over recent decades, pointing out that the “place to start is with an understanding of NIH’s political context, and the fact that the NIH budget rests on several tectonic plates, subject to different political pressures.”