CONGRESS ASKS NIH TO JUSTIFY MORE THAN 160 RESEARCH PROJECTS

Congress this month asked the National Institutes of Health to justify
its support of more than 160 academic studies that involve sexual
behavior, HIV transmission, or alcohol and drug use, after several
lawmakers criticized some research projects in those areas as an
apparent waste of taxpayer money.

Such requests are not unprecedented, but the number of studies
included in the latest inquiry appears to involve significantly more
projects than past requests from Congress to any federal agency that
supports academic research.

Congress "asked NIH to explain the medical benefits hoped to be
derived from the studies, and we're in the process of doing that,"
John T. Burklow, an NIH spokesman, said on Friday.

For now, lawmakers have not explicitly threatened to pull federal
funds from the studies. But in July, the House of Representatives came
within two votes of yanking money from four research projects related
to sexual behavior, studies that some House members criticized as
wasteful and improper.

The unusual vote shocked many advocates for academic research, who see
this month's request as an attempt by some members of Congress to cast
a chilling effect on such research.

The dispute continued on October 2 at a Congressional oversight
hearing at which several House members again objected to some NIH
studies, in addition to asking NIH officials about unrelated matters.
The lawmakers said they were not trying to micromanage the NIH --
members of Congress typically defer to scientific experts at the NIH
and other federal agencies to choose which projects to support.

But the lawmakers said that they wanted the agency to explain why it
was supporting some studies on topics that to them seemed unrelated to
the nation's most important health concerns.

Rep. Mike Ferguson, a New Jersey Republican, cited studies about the
sexual health of older men and a research project on "prostitute
masseuses." Another congressman, Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, a Pennsylvania
Republican, cited a study of sexual arousal among people viewing
pornography.

"It's difficult to comprehend what medical benefit, what public-health
benefit, could be derived," said Mr. Ferguson at the hearing. "Perhaps
there are some, but when you're weighing it against competing
projects, it's very difficult to see how that can be justified."

The NIH received from Congress the list of hundreds of projects
sometime after that hearing, Mr. Burklow said. The agency's staff
members will be contacting some researchers on the list to gather
information about the studies, he added.

Further details about the list were not immediately available on
Friday. Mr. Burklow said he could not immediately say how many
projects it contained and who in Congress had sent it to the agency.

A source close to the situation, who demanded anonymity, provided The
Chronicle with a copy of the list said to have been sent to the NIH.
But Mr. Burklow said he could not immediately confirm that The
Chronicle's list was identical to the list that the NIH had received.

The list provided to The Chronicle contains grants provided to
approximately 160 principal investigators at universities across the
country since 1997. They were awarded through 9 separate institutes
among the NIH's 27 institutes and centers. The combined dollar value
of all the grants appears to be a small fraction of the NIH's annual
budget of $27.2-billion.

It was unclear if the list contained the projects cited by Mr.
Ferguson and other congressmen at the October 2 hearing. Mr.
Ferguson's spokesman, A. Bailey Wood, said he had no information to
provide about the list.

At the October 2 hearing, the NIH's director, Elias A. Zerhouni, told
Mr. Pitts, "There's clearly a need for us to be transparent and open
and making sure that you're comfortable because it would be
detrimental for all of us if a small portfolio of the agency was
opaque to taxpayers."