Boost for biodefence

The National Institutes of Health's budget includes $150 million to build 20 ‘biosafety level 3’ secure labs for investigating hazardous biological materials. Once completed, they will conduct about 200 projects finding ways to protect the public from bioterrorism.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, the overall 2005 budget is down by 1%. But a new, $130-million biosurveillance programme is proposed to monitor the ‘quiet’ spread of diseases by tracking non-patient data, such as sales of particular pharmaceuticals.

Military might

The Pentagon's overall budget is boosted by 7% to $400 billion, but researchers and grant recipients won't see any of the extra cash.

Basic and applied research at the defence department — the main source of support for computer science and engineering research in US universities — would be cut by 11% to $5.2 billion.

But funding for the deployment of missile defence systems — whose efficacy has been questioned by US physicists (see Nature 424, 240; 2003) — will rise by 13% to $10.3 billion.

Moonbound, eventually...

Since President Bush announced his goal to return astronauts to the Moon (see Nature 427, 273; 2004), the question has been how NASA will pay for it. A little light was shed on this in the agency's budget proposal, which sees its overall allocation rise by 5.6% to $16.2 billion.

Most of the money for the new programme will come from converting existing rocket development work to designing new vehicles and phasing out the space shuttle. Scientists will have to make sacrifices too. A proposed ‘Beyond Einstein’ initiative to study dark matter and black holes would be deferred. Spending on Earth science would drop by 8% and space science would grow at a slower rate than projected last year. But Mars-related science and technology is up by 16% to $691 million.

...but less joy on Earth

Environmental science programmes are among those hardest hit in the entire proposal. The budget for science and technology at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is cut by 12% to $577 million. Research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is down 3% to $350 million, and research at the US Geological Survey is down by 2% to $920 million.

Mark Udall (Democrat, Colorado), senior minority party member on the House subcommittee overseeing environmental research, says: “I am very disappointed. This is a budget lacking vision.”