Medical grants a boon for Mass. : Only Calif. received more NIH funding

The Boston Globe reports:

Massachusetts biomedical researchers are seeing a windfall from federal stimulus money, with the state receiving more in grants from the National Institutes of Health than all others but California.

With $178 million in extra federal funds already directed toward Massachusetts, research projects that had been dormant are being revived and others are accelerating.

By midweek, 660 new grants had been sprinkled across the state’s hospitals and university laboratories as part of the Obama administration’s campaign to kick-start a sputtering economy. More money is coming in daily, and researchers say they have begun hiring junior scientists and technicians and buying new equipment.

Massachusetts lags behind more populated states in overall stimulus funding, but scientists here are receiving a disproportionate share of the $10 billion the NIH plans to distribute. California has received 927 grants totaling $244 million, according to the Globe’s analysis of NIH data on funds awarded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

They like big government in Massachusetts because they are beneficiaries of it.