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Hello, Thanks Mary Yost for the very timely article. I wouldn't label it as non-PD. There is a "revolution of rising expectations" among the disease -suffering public, and doubling NIH fnnding in 10 years, which Congress is working toward, won't be enough to meet demand. It looks to me like disease groups who have been blessed by favorable Congressional action could be out-lobbied by those who haven't. So the questions of priorities, what they should be and who sets them, become very important, and it might benefit us to have a well thought out position and to be proactive. The way it has worked so far is this: Unless Congress intervenes, research funding allocation decisions are made by the NIH, and the justifications of the resulting dollar amounts are not published. With the NIH at least nominally opening itself to public input via the Council of Public Representatives, there may be an opportunity to be heard. There may be others. The NIH director and the various Institutes have offices of public liaison. Also, at the NIH public meeting a few months ago at which the role of the COPR was discussed, there was mention that another public meeting would be forthcoming about setting priorities. And the priorities issue could come up again in Congress. The article is inaccurate about recommendations of the outside study of the NIH. The study referred to in the article (Institute of Medicine report "Scientific Opportunities and Public Needs" viewable and downloadable through the National Academy of Science Press web site www.nap.edu) recommended much more than the council, which the article wrongly labeled as the main product. Another recommendation, for example, is that NIH do a better job of explaining itself to the public. Phil Tompkins Hoboken NJ age 60/dx 1990