NIH

The answer, this time, isn't simply more cash, says Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute. Instead, changing the way research money is distributed might fix systemic problems.

A shrinking pool of grant money for medical research has led competing applicants to oversell weak scientific findings, critics say. The result: Many experimental treatments are worthless.

They were talented, idealistic risk-takers on the road to what they thought would be important medical discoveries. But when the funding for risk-takers dried up, these two academics called it quits.

The sloppy handling by federal scientists of the world's scariest germs must stop, says the dismayed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Are his new rules enough?

A lack of funding to labs is likely to mean an early death for thousands of mice used in scientific and medical research. The loss of specialty mice, many of which have genes that can cause them to develop versions of human diseases, is especially troubling to scientists — and expensive.