The Government's Goose

Last year government and private agencies gave the Harvard Medical Center over $5,000,000 for research on various projects. Everyone seemed to have a pocketbook to match his problem, and to the casual observer Harvard should have had little to do but cash the check and proceed to investigate. Actually, Medical and Dental School authorities are worried whether their budgets can stand much more of this philanthropy.

As Robert Cutler '16, head of the Overseers' Committee to visit the Medical and Dental Schools, pointed out at the American Medical Association convention last week, the problem is that grants often do not include sufficient funds to cover "indirect" expenses. Such costs include salaries of assistants, supplies and equipment, extra maintenance men, utilities, and a number of other hidden expenses. Although these factors might seem insignificant, extra expenses on the $5,000,000 Harvard used in grants in 1954 amounted to $1,500,000. Of that sum, donors paid only $500,000 and left the Medical Center with a million dollar bill to pay out of its thin general funds.

Already the Medical School has had to turn down proposed grants because it could not afford the overhead. Some agencies, notably the armed forces and the Atomic Energy Commission, have recognized the problem and have made provisions to pay for all indirect expenses. But the Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation, from which Harvard gets twice as much as from the above sources, has been unable to convince the government that it should appropriate more money for overhead costs.

By not defraying these expenses, the government will, as Cutler says, "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs" of research. Although they are best qualified to do the work, large medical schools such as Harvard have an unhappy choice: overextending themselves financially or refusing more and more grants. As costs continue to mount, the government should take the initiative of relieving medical centers of the present strain. Unless the government acts first, private donors will no doubt continue their present short-sighted policy while necessary scientific projects suffer.