Pandemic Failures Underscore Flaws in Centralizing Control Over Public Health

It can squeeze out intellectual diversity and serve the selfish interests of those in charge. Between 1998 and 2003, the budget of the National Institutes of Health was doubled. This was an extraordinary enterprise after the multi-year, post-Cold War decline in defense spending and at a time when government agency budgets tended to be increased marginally or carried over from previous years. It was a bipartisan project put into effect by two Senate appropriators, Republican Arlen Specter and Democrat Tom Harkin, with the support of the Clinton and Bush administrations...