How the NIH became the backbone of American medical research and a major driver of innovation and economic growth

NIH researchers conducted some of the earliest experiments for developing chemotherapy to treat cancer, circa 1950. National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

As a young medical student in 1975, I walked into a basement lab at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to interview for a summer job.

It turned out to be the start of a lifelong affiliation – first as a trainee, then as a grantee running a university laboratory and finally, now, as a researcher of economics and public policy studying the agency’s impact on health care and on the national economy.