to eat only red meat and wine for three years, while another group of youths ate only beans and water. The experiment was intended to determine if a diet of vegetables and water was healthier than a diet of wine and red meat. At the experiment endpoint, the trial accomplished its prerogative: the youths who ate only beans and water were noticeably healthier. Scientific curiosity to understand health outcomes from varying treatments has been present for centuries, but it was not until the mid-19th century when an organizational platform was created to support and regulate this curiosity. In 1945, Vannevar Bush said that biomedical scientific research was "the pacemaker of technological progress", an idea which contributed to the initiative to found the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1948, a historical benchmark that marked the beginning of a near century substantial investment in biomedical research. 20th and 21st century in the United States The NIH provides more financial support for medical research than any other agency in the world to date and claims responsibility for numerous innovations that have improved global health. The historical funding of biomedical research has undergone many changes over the past century. Innovations such as the polio vaccine, antibiotics and antipsychotic agents, developed in the early years of the NIH lead to social and political support of the agency. Political initiatives in the early 1990s lead to a doubling of NIH funding, spurring an era of great scientific progress. There have been dramatic changes in the era since the turn of the 21st century to date; roughly around the start of the century, the cost of trials dramatically increased while the rate of scientific discoveries did not keep pace. Biomedical research spending increased substantially faster than GDP growth over the past decade in the US, between the years of 2003 and 2007 spending increased 14% per year, while GDP growth increased 1% over the same period (both measures adjusted for inflation). Industry, not-for-profit entities, state and federal funding spending combined accounted for an increase in funding from $75.5 billion in 2003 to $101.1 billion in 2007. Due to the immediacy of federal financing priorities and stagnant corporate spending during the recession, biomedical research spending decreased 2% in real terms in 2008. Despite an overall increase of investment in biomedical research, there has been stagnation, and in some areas a marked decline in the number of drug