NIGM is an acronym for National Institute of General Medical Sciences. It is part of NIH (National Institute of Health). It gives away 11% of all of the money given away as grants to universities by NIH. That 11% constitutes 4700 grants at any one time, with an average of $343,847 per grant. Therefore, the total value of the grants appears to be $1.6 billion. Since that is only 11% of the total, all of NIH grants appear to be $14.7 billion. If the US population is about 350 million, that's $42 per person or $168 for a family of four . These numbers were taken from Britt Erickson's article of August 20 in Chemical and Engineering News. . Let's also remember that this is only NIH. It is the biggest grant donor, but there are several others of substantial size.
The big question is, as an average citizen, what did you get for your money? Can you name some great accomplishment that your expenditure was able to buy. Did you get a cancer cure for $168 or did you learn that a butterfly flaps its wings 14 times per minute? Compare that with private industry improvements to your computer operation, better TVs, and smart phones made available to you for purchase without putting up a nickel deposit in the hope that you might get something.
Isn't it high time that we put a stop to this sort of folly? As a society, we didn't get into $16 trillion debt, because of rational expenditures. It's because of this sort of ridiculous shenanigans by government agencies giving away our money.
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