July 17

Possible Transfusion for NIH

With his head still balding from 12 recent cycles of chemotherapy, Sen. Arlen Specter touted a new effort Wednesday to bolster medical research funding by $5.2 billion, $1.2 billion of which would be specifically aimed at unlocking the mysteries of cancer.

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Specter learned in April that he has had a recurrence of Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer for which he was previously treated in 2005. Speaking of the pending legislation during a Senate subcommittee meeting, Specter spoke of his personal struggles with disease, adding that the United States had done little to end the “war on cancer” that President Richard Nixon declared more than 30 years ago.

“If that war had been pursued with the intensity of other wars, I wouldn’t have gotten Hodgkin’s,” he said.

Specter and Harkin’s proposed legislation would add supplemental funding to the 2008 budget for the NIH, which is the primary source of federal money for university biomedical research. This money would come on top of the $29.38 billion already appropriated to the NIH this year.

The new funding would keep the NIH budget on pace with inflation, something that hasn’t happened in the last five years, according to news releases issued by both senators.

After Boom, NIH Growth Slows

Congress began an effort in 1999 to double the NIH budget, bringing it to $27.1 billion in 2003. But the excitement that once spurred lawmakers to infuse the institutes with funds has waned in recent years. That downward trend was the subject of great criticism during Wednesday’s meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies.

“I think that [decline] is shameful,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “And I don’t think it’s defensible morally or politically.”

Wednesday’s meeting featured an all-star cast of top-notch researchers, including Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project. Collins lamented what he described as noticeable declines in American-sponsored research, which has left a vacuum for countries like England and China to emerge as research powers.

“I’m seeing our leadership on many of these projects eroded,” he said.

Specter, long a champion of the NIH, urged the scientists in the meeting to promise real results that he could sell to his Senate colleagues. What would happen, for instance, if the NIH received $335 billion over the next 15 years? Could cancer be cured?

Specter’s question elicited little in the way of concrete answers from the esteemed panel, illustrating a notable tension between the NIH and the lawmakers who steer money toward biomedical research. Lawmakers want real promises, like “we’ll cure AIDS if you give us X.” But scientists will tell you that the often mysterious process of discovery makes these promises difficult, if not impossible, to make.

While there was a lot of big talk about curing diseases Wednesday, the Harkin/Specter legislation will face real challenges. Asked about the legislation’s probability for success, the Office of Management and Budget was quick to throw some cold water.

“Congress needs to first focus on its fundamental job to fund our government in a fiscally responsible way,” Jane Lee, a spokeswoman for the office, said in an e-mail. “They failed to get a single one of the 12 annual appropriations bills to the President’s desk. With 25 legislative days left before the end of the fiscal year, this is the latest that both chambers have failed to pass any of their annual spending bills in more than two decades.”

President Bush, who once embraced the doubling of the NIH budget, has also signaled that he wants no new growth of the NIH budget during the final year of his presidency. His 2009 budget proposal freezes the funding at current levels.

“Rest assured,” Harkin said, “that Congress will not accept the president’s approach.”

— Jack Stripling

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Comments

Jack Stripling’s Misleading Statement

Bush didn’t just “embrace” doubling of NIH funding. NIH funding nearly doubled during the first term of Bush’s presidency (you can look it up). It has remained static since. The bizarre consequence has been that Bush has been accused time and time again of lack of support for the NIH and medical research funding. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Scrawed, at 8:05 pm EDT on July 17, 2008

Not quite

Regardless of what happened 6 years ago, NIH funding has not kept up with inflation. This has led to a net loss. Salaries continue to rise (and we aren’t talking salaries of the faculty, so much as the postdocs, who earn on the order of $35K with their PhD from Harvard or UCSF) and technology is expensive.

With success rates dropping precipitously, I know of far too many productive mid-career faculty who have NO FUNDING AT ALL. Research teams are scattered. Postdocs gone. Technicians fired. Students eeking out a degree while TAing full time. Faculty losing at least their summer salary, and sometimes more. You can’t just glue Humpty back together again after a year of no funding.

And, with actual reductions occuring in outer years of the grant (non-competing renewals are not just static, but actively CUT), entire programs are deciimated by a thousand cuts.

Do we want a competitve science base in theis country or not? Do we want students and postdocs educated and productive, or not? Because the tax payer spent a lot on making me the best scientist I can be. And all I want to do is work my best and make crucial discoveries, but I can’t do it without money, staff, or supplies. And my students sure as heck have no motivation to do research as a career either.

Biosciprof, at 9:25 pm EDT on July 17, 2008

Response to “Not Quite”

Not Quite claimed “Regardless of what happened 6 years ago, NIH funding has not kept up with inflation. This has led to a net loss.”

This is extremely misleading.When you get close to a 100% funding boost as the NIH did, and then you adjust for US inflation over the last 4 years, (usually running at about 3-3.5% until last year’s 5%) you still wind up with a 70% INCREASE over your original base funding level. There has therefore been a net gain — not a net loss. It would be far more accurate to say that SINCE THE BOOST IN FUNDING, NIH funding has not been adjusted for inflation, and consequently there has been a net loss in funding since 2004 — following extraordinary gains that are unlikely to reoccur in our lifetimes.

Not Quite’s subsequent description may indicate that the problem may not be overall funding but rather how that funding has been used and administered. There is an excellent discussion among the comments here:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/12/nih

On an aside I will point out that the image of “students eeking out a degree,” while presumably the result of an unintended typo, was pretty funny (I’ve heard of lab rats, but this is ridiculous). I’ve had typos too.

Finally I’d argue the answer to “Not Quite’s” impassioned rhetorical final plea ( “Do we want a competitve science base in theis country or not?” ) is a surprising and disturbing “no” from the powers that be — but that has much less to do with R & D funding levels (fairly healthy in aggregate) than it does unhealthy academic, government and industrial practices. A country cannot have a competitive science base if it is determined to import students en masse; staff labs, graduate and post-doc positions entirely with international students; offshore-outsource both production and entire industries; and conduct R & D abroad — and that is precisely what the US has been doing for over 25 years — all the while slandering American students, American education, and American labor.

http://www.phds.org/the-big-picture/immigration/

Scrawed, at 7:40 pm EDT on July 18, 2008