  It was the DOE that made the first push toward a “Big Science” genome project: DeLisi advanced a five-year plan in 1986, $4.5 million was allocated from the 1987 budget, and recognizing the boost the endeavor would provide to national weapons laboratories, Senator Pete Domenici from New Mexico introduced a bill in Congress. The DOE undertaking produced consternation among biomedical researchers who were traditionally supported by the NIH's intramural and extramural programs—for example, Caltech's David Botstein referred to the initiative as “DOE's program for unemployed bomb-makers” (in Cook-Deegan 1994, p. 98). James Wyngaarden, head of the NIH, was persuaded to lend his agency's support to the project in 1987. Funding was in place in time for fiscal year (FY) 1988 with Congress awarding the DOE $10.7 million and the NIH $17.2  million.[2] The DOE and NIH coordinated their efforts with a Memorandum of Understanding in 1988 that agreed on an official launch of the HGP on October 1, 1990 and an expected date of completion of 2005. Total cost estimated by the NRC report was $3 billion. 