TRUTH about US R&D SPENDING from BRITISH NATURE

[Bert Gold]

from Nature, 28 March 1996, page 271:
(Editorial Page)

...A projected catastrophe for science in the United States
undermines government credibility

...The Clinton Administration and Republican Congress, while
holding substantially different positions on such items as technology
and environmental research, are basically united in their professed
intent of hammering science spending in order to balance the budget.
So it is wrong for Al Gore, the vice president, to say --
as he did last month -- that Republican plans for science spending
will lead to Japan surpassing the US in non-military science spending
"at the turn of the century" while the administration has "a very
sensible plan" to prevent this from happening.  It has nothing of
the kind.
...If the United States moves to balance its budget without tackling
the areas where it actually spends three-quarters of the money
-- defence and manditory health and social security programmes
-- then science spending will be crushed, along with much else of
value that the federal government does.  The best that can be said
for Clinton is that he is even less sincere about doing this than
is the Congress.

 Bert Gold, Ph.D.                         "If only we stay with that principle
 University of California, San Francisco   which counsels us always to hold
 School of Medicine                        to the difficult, then that which
 Department of Pediatrics                  now seems to us most foreign, will 
 Program in Medical Genetics               become what we most trust and
 (415) 476-2850                            find most faithful." - R.M. Rilke