Slump in NIH Funding Is Taking Toll on Research

By Christopher Lee

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A06

Stanford University biochemist Roger D. Kornberg won a Nobel Prize last year for work he began in the 1970s, but he is pretty sure that if he had been born a generation later, he never would have had the chance.

The scientist, 60, is convinced that his groundbreaking research, in which he figured out how information in the DNA of a gene is copied to provide instructions for building and running a living cell, would never have gotten the necessary funding support in today's tight budget environment at the National Institutes of Health.