Med School To Benefit From New Gov't. Policy

The Harvard Medical Center will save up to $1,000,000 a year under a new research grant policy that the Government will announce before next June, Robert Cutler '16, former security adviser to President Eisenhower, has predicted.

The new policy will bring increased payments for the overhead expenses of medical research projects financed by grants from the Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation. It will thus immediately ease the budgets of the many medical schools that receive these grants. In addition, the policy will probably spur private foundations to make similar increases in the grant-payments that they issue to research institutions, Cutler said.

Cutler, who is head of the Overseers' Committee to Visit the Medical and Dental Schools, revealed that he has proposed the policy change to many Government officials, including the President.

Government Policy Criticized

Last week Cutler told the American Medical Association convention that the Government, by continuing to withhold the "indirect costs" of its grants, would "kill the goose that lays the golden egg of research."

The Overseer pointed out that the Harvard Medical Center, which comprises the Medical School and its seven affiliated hospitals, last year had to spend $1,000,000 out of its own "strained general funds" merely to pay for such overhead items as assistants, lighting, and building maintenance on the research grants that it had accepted.

In recent years the Medical School has even considered the rejection of some research grants because it could not pay the overhead costs on them, according to Henry C. Meadow, Assistant Dean of the School.

Meadow agreed with Cutler, however, that help from the Government will probably come before next June. Both men predicted that private research foundations like the American Cancer Society, some of which at present give no overhead money with their grant, would probably follow the Government's decision in the matter.