From the latest issue of Science (subscription required):

Most institutes are affected, but the pain is acute at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), where up to 12 intramural labs–run by 16% of 74 tenured staff–could be shuttered. “This is a completely new category of nightmare,” says an NICHD investigator who asked not to be named. Compared with a poor review in the extramural world, in which a researcher can try for a new grant, closing an intramural lab means going “from full funding to zero,” he says.

The effects of a basically stagnant/negative growth funding of the NIH are atrocious. The NICHD researches innovative ways to reduce infant mortality, improve the health of mankind, understand reproductive health, improve human development, and treat developmental disabilities. So the United States, already falling in comparison to the rest of the world in engineering and science growth, experiencing a mass migration of even high tech jobs overseas, and having one of the highest infant mortality rates of all developed countries, cannot even fund institutes that directly fights all of these issues? It’s time to change congress.