The tiny "caps" that keep our chromosomes from fusing together are also providing clues that could eventually lead to the achievement of one our nation's most important public health goals: extending good health well into old age.

Many of you have probably heard much of the dialogue in the cloning controversy. Between the opinion articles in your local paper and the national news that a religious sect claimed to have successfully cloned a human, cloning technology is often in the news.

When you have brought the enemy to its knees, you do not turn tail and give up the fight. This axiom of military strategy appears to be lost on the nation's lawmakers, who stand poised to deprive medical researchers of the dollars they need to see their wars on disease through to the finish. Just as they deliver funds to protect the homeland in the name of national security, so legislators should provide for the nation's health security. With breakthroughs in heart disease, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and cancer on the horizon, congressional failure to meet the National Institutes of Health's budget requests could devastate research and delay lifesaving treatments.