The National Institutes of Health decided recently not to pursue its patent application for the gene fragments that Dr. Venter isolated while on its payroll.

The National Cancer Institute decided it could not pay the $15 million to $18 million a year needed to operate the accelerator on its own.

The National Cancer Institute has decided instead to support another technique, using protons.

The National Institutes of Health recently decided not to undertake large-scale tests for two potential vaccines, saying there seemed to be little chance they would work well enough.

But the National Institutes of Health decided this would be too costly and long.

The National Institutes of Health is now deciding which genomes of which species are worth decoding in their entirety.

The accounting office said the National Institutes of Health had decided that people conducting certain types of research did not need to report on the inclusion of women.

"There is definitely a boundary there that the National Institutes of Health and conventional medicine has decided it isn't going to cross," Dr. Van Bokkelen said.

In 1990, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health decided to map our accumulated genetic material, which we call a genome.

Recently, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) decided that acupuncture and chiropractic are good treatments for recurring back pain.