Comments on: Where’s the Biomed Bailout?

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:40:19 +0000

I am a young scientist in the middle of this financial crisis. I can personally tell you that what you said is absolutely right. As postdocs we are already getting paid below minimum income (ie most of us are living below the poverty line! we joke sometimes about nbc having a special “PhDs forced to work long hours horrible pay: the truth about young investigators”); historically this has always been the case, but now its much worse because room is very limited and we have to constantly worry about loosing our salary because of funding. I know of many colleagues who are switching to industry, another country and/or changing job. Situation looks bleak; for some situation its worse that 80%.

One thing not mentioned was the media coverage for NIH funding crisis, which is close to none -> I was lucky to find this via Google. Your last couple of paragraphs nailed it -> deep inside I think most of us cares more about our body but some reason or another the media does not think it important enough to cover.

By: Merrill Goozner

Merrill Goozner — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:22:52 +0000

I am a fervent supporter of more public sector support for research, but by focusing exclusively on NIH, you are missing the larger opportunity for medical innovation that is more pressing at this point in time: the need for new and better ways to deliver health care and promote health. For the vast majority of diseases, we need better ways of delivering old innovations and better ways of preventing disease, not ever evolving ways of curing it.

Let’s look at the issue in budgetary terms. The U.S. spends about 2.8 percent of its $2.4 trillion annual national health expenditures budget or about $67 billion on public health. That means NIH is getting nearly half of all money with CDC, AHRQ, WRAIR, all state and city public health departments, and private and non-profit efforts dividing the rest. The total would be even less if NIH hadn’t gotten a major $2 billion annual infusion from the war on bioterrorism, which many would argue has skewed research priorities in the infectious disease arena.

So by all means, let’s raise our voices for more money for public health and public research. But let’s simultaneously talk about priorities and competition for scarce resources within this embattled community, and priorities within NIH. Given the poor performance of the U.S. health care system, we cannot allow the debate to be hijacked by well-funded patient lobby groups who peddle the “diseases that would have been cured in the next five years if only we had more money for research” line. That may have worked in the late 1990s, but it doesn’t address the health care system’s present needs.

Moreover, anyone with even a passing familiarity of the research and development process that leads to discreet biomedical interventions as a way of curing disease knows that the translational process from NIH-funded basic science to validated targets to actual cures is far more complex, usually more time-consuming, and often fruitless endeavor than that guilt-inducing formulation — “I would have been cured if only the government spent more money on research” — would allow.

Please don’t take this to mean I am against more money for NIH. But they are just one agency out of many in our government that has been systematically starved for funds over the past decade.

The next president will get a chance to pick a new leader at NIH. He or she should open a public discussion about the agency’s priorities with its existing funds, and engage the entire public health community, of which it is only one part, in the discussion about where are the next great opportunities in health and health care innovation.

By: Tom Nichols

Tom Nichols — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:02:29 +0000

This is truly amazing that the National Institutes of Health has been flatlining for over four years…This in itself reflects the need for change. Medical research will effect society in the following areas, an increase of healthy citizens for a healthy workforce, a decrease in SSI claims, medical insurance claims will drop as more and more diseases are cured rather than just treating the symptoms.
We as a nation should be insisting that the funding for the N.I.H. be increased dramatically!!!!

By: John Maszka

John Maszka — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:31:30 +0000

This bailout is just one more example of the indivisible handjob stroking irresponsible CEOs and CFOs with billions so that they can run the American economy even further into the ground. So much for Keynesian economics. If the goal is to stimulate the economy, why not give the money directly to the American taxpayer? We’d do twice as much good for the economy by giving even half as much directly to the taxpayers. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush administration.

By: Marilyn Walker

Marilyn Walker — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:22:10 +0000

This is brilliant, thank you! Because of the public opinion polls we commission at Research!America, we know that Americans want the National Institutes of Health to receive more funding. In a recent survey, 45% said investment in NIH should be increased (see the finding from our Your Candidates-Your Health survey). Americans are also willing to pay more in taxes to fund medical research (57% said they would be willing to pay $1 per week more in our 2007 National Survey, available in our Poll Data Summary. So, Americans want more research and are willing to pay for it. And we also know that investment in research can save money in the long run and has positive impacts on the economy. (We've collected examples of this positive impact in all 50 states in our Economic Impact by State tool.) Thank you for taking this position and writing about the need to increase funding for the NIH.