Clinical research and the NIH--a report card.

In 1995, Harold E. Varmus, who was then the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), convened the NIH Director’s Panel on Clinical Research. The panel was charged with making recommendations to foster the NIH’s support of clinical research, a field that was pervaded by discouragement and believed to be in jeopardy. 1-4 The panel met between July 1995 and November 1997, when it issued a series of recommendations. 2,5 In this article, we review these recommendations, inventory the changes made within the NIH and in clinicalresearch portfolios within the private sector since 1995, and assess the effects of these changes.