NCBI in trouble
David Lipman and the NCBI are under attack from Congressman Natcher's
Appropriations Sub-committee. It is being argued that they should stop
producing Entrez, BLAST and other software products for distribution to
the scientific community, because they compete unfairly with commercial
enterprises that do the same thing. As a result there is a move to delete
as much as 50% of their funding. This would wreck NCBI and cause the rest
of us to be deprived of the resources currently being provided by NCBI. I
strongly oppose this move since I believe that companies actually benefit
from the free software and services provided by NCBI. A company would need
to be very insecure to find the existence of NCBI threatening.
To help avoid the potential destruction of NCBI I would urge all readers of
this column to write directly to Congressman Natcher in support of NCBI and
to ask colleagues also to write in support. This is the most effective way
to avoid a potentially disastrous situation.
Write before July 1st to:
Congressman William H. Natcher
Chairman
Appropriations Committee on Labor, Health and Human Services,
Education and Related Agencies
2358, Rayburn House Office Building
Washington DC 20515
FAX # (202) 225-3509
Note that there is some urgency here because the committee
meets very soon
Rich Roberts
