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Thursday, October 1, 2009

Obama touts $5 billion in health science grants

The president tours a Maryland cancer lab to underscore the biomedical research grants, which are funded under the federal economic stimulus program.


President Obama toured a Maryland cancer lab Wednesday to call attention to $5 billion in new government health science grants, which he described as the "largest single boost to biomedical research in history."

The National Institutes of Health grants, awarded in recent weeks to more than 12,000 projects around the country, are funded under the $787-billion federal economic stimulus program that Obama signed into law in February.

The White House said the grants would help generate tens of thousands of jobs in research and in businesses that supply equipment to laboratories or would be involved in building or modernizing research facilities.

The stimulus program is "not just about creating make-work jobs. It's about creating jobs that will make a lasting difference for our future," Obama told several hundred scientists at the NIH campus in suburban Maryland.

Obama briefly visited one of the labs involved, part of the National Cancer Institute's Urologic Oncology Branch, where he peered through a microscope at a piece of brain tissue.

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