This summer, many biomedical editors and publishers are wondering how their journals will survive if the government goes ahead with a plan to distribute biomedical papers for free on the Internet. But the plan9s author, National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Harold Varmus, is charging forward with "E-biomed," as he calls it, anyway. In a six-page memo posted on NIH9s Web site on 21 June, he suggests that the planning is moving toward a dramatic climax.