Sir

According to your News story '222 NIH grants: 22 researchers' (Nature 452, 258–259; 2008), I receive a large number of dollars from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for 'cancer research'. As any knowledgeable reader will guess, more than 90% of that supports institutional activities, such as our Comprehensive Cancer Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and not my own research laboratory. The story's bar chart may provide a source of (misleading) gossip, but it does not usefully serve readers looking for insight into the current crisis of funding at the NIH.