President Barack Obama announced at the National Institute of Health this morning that his administration will commit $5 billion in grant money — taken from the $787 billion stimulus package — to medical research.
“This represents the single largest boost to biomedical research in history,” the President said.
Obama highlighted a number of diseases the grants would be used to research, including cancer, autism and heart disease.
The President took a swipe of sorts at his predecessor’s commitment to scientific research, saying, “If we’re honest, in recent years we’ve seen our leadership slipping as scientific integrity was at times undermined and research funding failed to keep pace.”
The President also had a jab at the tenor of the health care reform debate. “While we’ve made great advances in medicine, our debates haven’t always kept pace,” he said.
