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Another potential threat to Italy's National Research Council (CNR), as politicians consider the future shape of research funding (see above), is a proposal to create a National Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Research.

The ministry of health wants to link its 20 regional clinical research centres into a national institute coordinated by the Rome-based Istituto Superiore di Sanitá (ISS), the Higher Institute of Public Health.

This proposal, referred to in the research ministry's document on reform of the Italian research structure, presented to the cabinet last week, could depend on the outcome of a complete restructuring of the ISS.

In addition to its many research programmes, the 1,500-strong ISS is burdened by many public health responsibilities dealt with by separate ministries.

The Bassanini law (see above) allows the government to rationalize these duties, and the health ministry is now discussing the creation of an independent agency, similar to the US Food and Drug Administration, to take over some of them.

Other ISS duties, such as those related to environmental toxicology, would also be transferred, leaving the ISS as the central institute of the proposed national network.

Giuseppe Benegiano, the new director of the ISS who took up office in May, opposes these moves. He supports the idea of a national institute but argues that it should retain its regulatory responsibilities. It makes sense financially to keep this within a restructured ISS “because we already have the infrastructure”.

Many universities, as well as the research ministry, are concerned about the suggestion of a national institute for biomedical and clinical research for another reason: that it would put responsibility for the financing of clinical biomedicine firmly in the hands of the health ministry.

The CNR is worried that, once such a national institute is created, there would be political pressure to transfer CNR's own 20-odd biomedical research institutes to the new national body. “Researchers in these institutes want to stay in the CNR,” says CNR president, Lucio Bianco.

Giuseppe Tognon, undersecretary of state for research, says that the controversy generated by the plan for a national institute suggests that the issue is likely to be resolved “in the long term rather than short term”.