Comment from Heike Wulff

[200.205, 200.340] To Whom it May Concern: I am a professor of Pharmacology who teaches medical and graduate students and runs a mostly NIH funded research group. I am writing in my personal capacity to oppose the proposed revisions to sections 200.205 and 200.340 that would undermine the integrity of federal grant review processes and federal science agencies' ability to identify and fund impactful research. The possibility of overriding peer review would make any type of planning for students, postdocs and project scientists very difficult. It would also affect the long-term translatability and continuation of projects that might need years to go from a discovery to translation. The possibility that a grant could be terminated at any time would create a tremendous amount of anxiety and uncertainly and would make it very risky to for invest in new techniques or equiment. Science is complicated and while the significance of a question can be often be judged by none-experts at a higher level, the feasibility and the approaches can often only be evaluated by peers. I am very concerned that grant funding my degenerate into an advertising campaign.