Messages In This Digest (2 Messages)
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- New file uploaded to StemCellInformation From: StemCellInformation@yahoogroups.com
- 2.
- # 427 Friday, March 21, 2008 - "FLAT-LINING" THE NIH BUDGET From: Stephen Meyer
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New file uploaded to StemCellInformation
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Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:33 am (PDT)
Hello,
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- 2.
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# 427 Friday, March 21, 2008 - "FLAT-LINING" THE NIH BUDGET
Posted by: "Stephen Meyer" Stephen276@comcast.net stephen_meyer_stemcells
Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:37 am (PDT)
"FLAT-LINING" THE NIH BUDGET
"FLATLINERS" was a movie I never saw, and never will: fiction
about bored kids playing with death. In a hospital, thrill-seekers would
let each other temporarily "die" so their vital signs (that
up-and-down line on a graph) would go flat. Despite an A-level cast
(Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland) the whole concept disgusted me.
As stem cell research advocates, we fight so hard to preserve
life—and to deliberately risk throwing it away? I am not paying
seven dollars to see that.
In a real hospital, "flat-lining" means somebody's loved one
is at risk.
And for research funding of the National Institutes of Health, (NIH),
"flat-lining" threatens us all.
First, a little background.
Much self-congratulation has been done by both political parties on the
"doubling"of the NIH budget, between 1998 and 2003, an effort of
the Clinton and Bush Administrations.
But to double an inadequate figure is not always a reason to celebrate.
If I make a dollar a year and I double my income, I still only have two
dollars, not exactly a thriving personal economy.
$29 billion to fund the war on chronic disease-- which America is
currently losing?
Or am I wrong? Maybe we are winning?
"Currently, seven of the most common chronic illnesses (including
cancer, diabetes, hypertension and stroke)…cost the U.S. $1.3
trillion per year… by 2023, there will be an estimated 230 million
cases of these diseases, at a cost of $4.2 trillion."—A Broken
Pipeline (copies available at http://www.brokenpipeline.org ).
Compare that to our total federal income tax receipts: $2 trillion.
There is no way to sugar-coat it; we need to triple or quadruple NIH
funding.
Instead, since 2003, the budget for the National Institutes of Health
has stayed flat—at a miserably insufficient $29 billion a year-- not
even adjusted for inflation!
"According to a commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine,
"the nation's biomedical research enterprise has never
experienced a recession of this magnitude or duration." (information
sources at conclusion.)
What does this mean to the researchers, men and women whose lives are
dedicated to ending suffering?
Constance McKee, co-executive director of Americans for Cures
Foundation, forwarded me an excellent article I urge for your reading.
BTW, do you know Constance? If you come to our SOSCA conference April
12-13*, (hint, hint), look for an elegant woman with lion-blonde hair
and a runner's build. If you talk to her for very long, I guarantee
your brain will itch—she's smart, she cares, and she works,
which is why she and Amy Daly (any long-term research supporter will
smile at hearing Daly's name) are partners in leadership at AFCF,
the legacy organization of the Proposition 71 campaign. Check out the
convention at www.Americansforcures.org
<http://www.americansforcures. > , register on line, come if youorg/
can!—more at the end of this article.
Meanwhile, back at the broken pipeline:
On March 11, 2008, seven outstanding research institutions (Brown
University, Duke Medicine, Harvard University, Ohio State Medical
Center, Partners Health Care, UCLA, and Vanderbilt University) presented
the results of a year-long study on the effects of flat-lining funding
of the NIH.
They did it the right way.
They had the overview, of course: "…the NIH is experiencing a
dangerous slowdown in funding. The year 2008 marks the agency's
fifth consecutive year of no real budgetary growth… a 13% drop in
purchasing power since 2003."
But they went further. Instead of just babbling away about how the NIH
needs more money, they followed the careers of 12 outstanding young
scientists, showing how their lives were impacted by the
shortsightedness of inadequate funding.
People like Isla Garraway, M.D., Ph.D., at UCLA, whose life is dedicated
to ending prostate cancer: which killed her father. As she says:
"Prostate cancer is a very painful and hard way to end life. It is
critical to find better therapies. Targeting the stem cells in prostate
cancer could be a big breakthrough."
These are not fictional movie kids, playing: these are real-life
workers.
They did everything right, took out endless college loans, investing not
just four years college for their BA, but also six years after that to
get their doctor's degree—and several years after that doing
post-doctoral studies, and then— but check this out:
"After four years of undergraduate education, students go on to earn
an advanced Ph.D. degree, which takes an average of six years. Next
comes the specialized training of a postdoctoral
fellowship—sometimes three years, but often five, six, or
more—where (he or she) masters…laboratory research. Then comes a
junior faculty appointment—assistant professor—at a research
university. Only then does academic tenure become a possibility, and it
is entirely dependent on receiving that first RO1 grant…"
As Nancy Andrews, M.D., Ph.D., Dean of Duke University Medical school
puts it:
"What a strange business this is: we stay in school forever. We have
to battle the system with only a one in eight or one in ten chance of
getting funded. We give up making a living until our forties. And we do
it because we want to help the world. What kind of crazy person would go
for that?"
What kind of people? America's best: willing to scrape by, denying
themselves pleasure and ease through all their young years, giving up
their youth-- on the chance they may be able to help the world when they
reach middle age.
In 1970, the average age of a scientist getting his or her first grant
was 34; today it is 43.
How many of us would hang around an extra nine years, hoping for a
break, knowing the odds are ten to one against us?
Even established scientists are not safe.
Jon Clardy, Ph.D, Harvard Medical School:
"The impact of flat funding has been felt all over…causing us to
reduce the size of our labs. People are working on conservative topics.
And there will be less international cooperation in the future, because
people are feeling less inclined to split resources."
The flat-lining of the NIH budget is forcing scientists to "downsize
their laboratories and abandon some of their most innovative and
promising work."
Abandoning research which might help millions…
Consider deafness. Think how many people are being slowly enclosed in
silence—roughly a third of all Americans past sixty-- when cure
might be possible.
Ann Giersch, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's
hospital:
"I've dissected the inner ears of all those different
mice—those that lose their hearing and those that don't—and
those tissues are just sitting in the freezer waiting. I haven't had
the money or the help to go any further with the experiments."
Above all, new scientists are at risk, the men and women who should be
able to work their way into a place where their training pays off for
our country and the world.
"These conditions may also be putting at risk a generation of young
researchers."
As Lee Riley, M.D., of UC Berkeley puts it:
"…new investigators suddenly have to compete heavily against each
other and against senior investigators for grants. Many of them are
leaving. This is a crisis for the research community."
Wait, it gets worse.
"Rejected grants, revised and resubmitted, create a backlog of
high-quality research proposals, and young investigators often wait
years longer...."
Given those odds, what is the likely outcome?
Many will see no choice except to go to work in some other field.
"Brown University's Tricia Serio: "When I started at Yale,
there were 30 Ph.D.s in my program. As far as I know, I'm the only
one who stayed in academic science."
Elias Zerhouni,M.D., Director, National Institutes of Health:
"Without effective national policies to recruit young scientists to
the field, and support their research over the long term, in 10 to 15
years, we'll have more scientists older than 65 than those younger
than 35. This is not a sustainable trend in biomedical research and must
be addressed aggressively."
The report's conclusion?
"Consistent and robust funding for the NIH… is in the national
interest: advancing the health of all people, strengthening the U.S.
economy, and enhancing U.S. competitiveness and global scientific
leadership."
The full text of "A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a
Generation of Science at Risk", is available at
http://www.brokenpipeline.org <http://www.brokenpipeline.org/ > .
I am also indebted to a very nice overview article done by Wendy Lawton
of Brown University
(http://www.brown.edu/Administrato n/News_Bureau/ 2007-08/07- 116.html
<http://www.brown.edu/Administrato > ),n/News_Bureau/ 2007-08/07- 116.html
"Report: Stagnant NIH Budgets May Derail Promising Researchers",
based on both "A Broken Pipeline" and the related report,
"Within Our Grasp – Or Slipping Away?" released one year
earlier.
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