NIH travel restrictions

A car accident on 6 March in which a National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoc was killed en route to the Biophysical Society annual meeting in Baltimore has highlighted what many at the institutes see as perverse travel restrictions.

Lodging is not covered for conferences within 50 miles of NIH. In the past the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency, has granted waivers, but not this time.

The Biophysical Society meeting is intense, and goes from early in the morning until late in the evening, says a senior NIH scientist who paid for his hotel out of his own pocket.

“We have had a lot of conflict about travel with HHS,” says bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, who heads the NIH assembly of scientists. “Our hope is that the authority [to grant waivers] be transferred to the scientists who run the labs, and that they manage to a goal—an amount of money or number of trips, whatever. We would prefer that HHS not micromanage.” Other US government agencies have similar travel restrictions, but at NIST, for example, decisions on waivers are made locally, not by the parent agency.

Will HHS reconsider its travel policy? “No,” says HHS spokesman Bill Hall. Noting that HHS upped the number of attendees to an international AIDS conference, he says, “we have an established record of understanding the need and importance for scientists to attend meetings. But we have to balance that against budgetary considerations and appropriate management.”