This story misidentified Charles Burant, a professor of internal medicine, as an associate professor.

The Journal of Clinical Investigation was misidentified as the Journal of Clinical Investigators.

The National Institutes of Health is the chief agency of the U.S. government responsible for biomedical research. It currently provides $28 billion annually to researchers, accounting for slightly less than a third of the total domestic funding for biomedical research. Its goal is to "acquire new knowledge to help prevent, detect, diagnose and treat disease and disability, from rarest genetic disorder, to the common cold," according to its website.

But a vast increase in the number of grant applications coupled with a frozen level of congressional funding has thrown the institution into its worst funding crisis in more than 30 years. The budget for the NIH doubled between 1995 and 2003 from $12 billion to $24 billion. But from 2003 to 2005, the budget remained at about $28 billion, and in 2006 the budget decreased for the first time in over 30 years. President Bush has asked lawmakers to keep the funding at the same level for the fiscal year 2007.

During the five-year doubling period of the budget, the number of applications increased by 5,334. In the two years following the doubling period, there were 5,208 new applications. This "post-doubling effect" has caused the competition for NIH funding to increase dramatically.

The University ranked seventh in overall funding awards, receiving 975 awards valued at $386,027,410 for the fiscal year 2005, a boost of 30 awards and about $18 million dollars.

Still, according to Ron Koenig, professor of medicine and director of the medical scientist training school, if the current dilemma the NIH faces persists for the next five years, the consequences could be detrimental to thousands of scientists needing work and millions of Americans needing medical treatment.

"The NIH has been a national treasure for over 50 years, supporting the world's best and most productive scientific enterprise," Andrew Marks, the editor in chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation wrote in an April editorial. Marks wrote that the current cutbacks in NIH support would be the equivalent of doubling the number of teams in Major League Baseball, then cutting their budgets so that one-third of the players are out of jobs. "The net effect on our nation's scientific productivity is devastating and will be for years to come," Marks wrote.

In 1992, according to data from the NIH, researchers aged 36 to 40 received 23.1 percent of R-series awards, grants that fund independent research. Historically, in a best-case scenario, R-series grants have been awarded to the top 20th percentile of grants, as reviewed by the NIH. While it's difficult to apply absolute terms by the percentile, anything below 15 percent is considered bad. Today that number has fallen to about 12 percent.

"The R-series grants . are the most important part of funding," Koenig said. "They are the foundation of biomedical research. They are the breeding ground for new scientists."

Marks described the investigator-initiated RO1 grant as "the most tried and true mechanism for funding science."

These are the numbers on every scientist's mind, no matter what they are studying in the lab.

"If this situation doesn't improve, the University could lose 40 percent of its research faculty," said John Kao, assistant professor of medicine.

Koenig, however, pointed out that it is difficult to say exactly how many people would be shaken from academic science. Still, people are already being forced out of academic science and into other areas. Kao said he had a colleague who left research to go into private practice in Florida, after being unable to get funding.

"There are a number of forces conspiring against researchers," said Charles Burant, an professor of internal medicine.

The post-doubling effect, coupled with a federal budget spread thickly on Iraq, homeland security and the defense department, money is scarce.

The result? There hasn't been a worse time for a scientist to apply for funding from NIH.

The scientist's struggle

It takes a long time to train the kinds of scientists who are directly affected by this crisis. Although there are hundreds of different types of scientists funded by the NIH, most can be lumped under two general training categories: M.D.Ph.D.s and Ph.D.s. Once a scientist has completed one of these two programs, he will enter nearly another decade of training before applying for an associate faculty position.

Kao's road to his current position at the University is typical of the experience of an M.D.Ph.D. After completing a three-year Internal Medicine residency, Kao spent three years in a fellowship program at the University.