Officials at the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Academy of Optometry and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology have published a joint letter urging Congress to reject a plan to close the National Eye Institute, according to an Oct. 30 Medscape report.
The proposal would consolidate the NEI with two other arms of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
"Maintaining the NEI as an independent institute is crucial to achieving its mission of eliminating vision loss and improving quality of life through research," wrote Stephen McLeod, MD, Susan Cotter, OD, and Srinivas Sadda, MD. "Consolidation with other programs will dilute and diminish this effort."
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce issued a proposal in June to reduce the number of NIH institutes and centers from 27 to 15.
The plan would consolidate the NEI, along with the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
The new institute would have a budget of $4 billion, which would be about $42 million more than what the three separate entities now receive. The NEI has an annual budget of $896.6 million out of a total NIH budget of $48.2 billion, according to the report.
The House report on NIH reform cited increasing budgetary restraints, a need for funding transparency, and concerns about waste, fraud and abuse.