Science Progress Blog
- EPA Denies Texas Waiver Request to Relax RFS Mandate
- Program to Help Developing Nations Forecast Natural Disasters Loses Funding
- Leveling the Playing Field: The Olympics, Doping, and the Enhancement Debate
- One Eye Open for Dual-Use Research
- Intern with Science Progress
- Doubling Down on NIH Funding
- Bipartisan Bill Would Promote Innovation in Reliable, Transparent Voting Technology
- What Took So Long?
- House Moves to Regulate Unregulated Drug Delivery Systems
- Talking Carbon Tonight on Colbert
- Congress Bans Toxins in Toys, Beauty Products
- Renewable Tax Credits Need Renewing
- End-of-the-Week Review: HIV, OTA, IMF, GMOs
- Origins of Dated Federal R&D Policy
- Climate Change is a Humanitarian Problem (With Health Consequences for All)
EPA Denies Texas Waiver Request to Relax RFS Mandate
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson announced today that the agency will deny the request of Texas Governor Rick Perry for a waiver that would reduce government ethanol production requirements.
Gov. Perry submitted a request on April 25 for a waiver that would reduce the federally mandated volume of ethanol by half, from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 4.5 billion gallons. The request argued that because the mandate drives up corn prices, it causes economic hardship to livestock producers by elevating animal feed costs and, according to the request letter, “driving up global food prices.”
But Johnson said during a 1 pm conference call today that “the RFS mandate is not causing severe economic harm,” nor is it damaging the environment, and therefore does not meet the statutory threshold that would warrant a waiver.
NREL
Corn is the primary feedstock for biofuels in the United States. Cellulosic feedstocks like switchgrass could produce sustainable biofuels with fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather, the administrator said, the Renewable Fuels Standard is strengthening America’s energy security and farming communities. In a press release statement, he called it “important tool in our ongoing efforts to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions and lessen our dependence on foreign oil.”
Since opening the request to public comment, the EPA did indicate that their modeling showed a relaxation of the mandate would reduce corn prices by between 7 and 30 cents per bushel.
Johnson made it clear on the conference call that the agency considered economic hardship as the primary criteria for the decision, as that was the focus of the Texas request. But he also mentioned the ongoing rulemaking process that will update the RFS guidelines in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. According to the legislation, the new rules must account for lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions ethanol and other renewable fuels.
That process is supposed to be completed in the fall, but may take until next year. One of the complexities involves the emissions impacts of land use change, for instance when domestic farmers move previously uncultivated land into production for biofuel feedstocks, releasing the carbon stored in the soil; or when shifts in production of one feedstock in the United States create incentives for farmers elsewhere in the global market to move carbon-storing land into production. Because the RFS requires that all renewable fuels meet or beat GHG lifecycle reductions of at least 50 percent compared to a fossil fuel baseline, emissions from land use change are significant and can wipe out the carbon savings from burning ethanol instead of gasoline, as two major studies released in February demonstrated.
A solution to the land use problem is to grow feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol on marginal land that does not compete with food. As we’ve written about previously on Science Progress, sustainably produced biofuels have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, diversify sources of transportation energy, and support a dynamic agricultural economy—both in the United States and abroad.
RFS production mandates in the EISA (from the Renewable Fuels Association):
Program to Help Developing Nations Forecast Natural Disasters Loses Funding
The National Center for Atmospheric Research has shut down a $500 million program that helps developing nations predict and prepare for natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and cyclones, Andrew Revkin reports in The New York Times. The program, called the Center for Capacity Building, was created in 2004.
AP/NASA
Cyclone Nargis as it approaches the coast of Bangladesh.
The program served a critical need for poor nations that lack the forecasting infrastructure to accurately predict or sufficiently prepare for natural disasters that ravage their population, cripple weak economies, and destroy food and water supplies.
Writing recently about the “Staggering Cyclone Nargis Catastrophe,” Chris Mooney argued that effective warning systems and evacuation plans have been effective:
Although the Yucatan and Central America got smacked by back-to-back Category 5 storms [in 2003]—Hurricanes Dean and Felix were both far more powerful, meteorologically, than Cyclones Sidr and Nargis—the combined death toll was only 162. That’s because nations like Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras warned their populations and, in some cases, evacuated people in vulnerable areas.
Cyclone Nargis, by comparison, claimed the lives of 138,000 people in Bangladesh. Accurate forecasting and disaster preparedness , which the Center for Capacity Building sought to implement, can save lives.
According to Revkin, the Center for Capacity Building was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, and was shut down due to “shrinking federal science budgets.” A recent supplemental appropriations bill for various scientific organizations, including NSF, is not sufficient to sustain essential scientific programs, and federal scientific budgets should be further increased.
Leveling the Playing Field: The Olympics, Doping, and the Enhancement Debate
The opening of the Beijing Olympics this Friday has provided another occasion for much public reflection on the ethics of sports doping. Already seven Russian track and field athletes have been suspended by the international authority for those events. It is not hard to imagine that betting pools will be created not only on the number of medals won in this Olympiad, but also on the number of medals withdrawn due to doping rules violations.
An upcoming Center for American Progress panel, “Sports Doping and the Age of Enhancement,” will examine these issues from the standpoints of science, ethics, and industry. Join us this Friday, August 8, from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm.
In one sense there is no issue: No one in any competitive enterprise should have an unfair advantage. So stated the point is a truism, for who is in favor of “unfairness”? However, it is also clear that detection is going to become more of a challenge. One strategy might resort to genetic interventions that result in the production of more naturally occurring proteins that in turn spur the body’s manufacture of oxygen-carrying red blood cells or of muscle cells. “Gene doping” would thus represent an “advance” over the artificial introduction of the compounds themselves, like the drug erythropoietin or EPO, which regulates red blood cells and can be detected.
Some argue that the whole debate is misplaced, that enhancement already takes place among athletes in many different ways, like using high altitude chambers or special elbow surgery that may improve strength. Others contend that, though it may be hard to draw lines, the point of sport is the combination of personal initiative along with making the most of natural gifts, that our very humanness is at stake if we succumb to the hubristic pursuit of perfection rather than the achievement of excellence. (Writing here at Science Progress, Arthur Caplan also considered the ethical questions of doping, including those involved in recent major league baseball scandals.)
The legal standards applied in both amateur and professional sports make this more than an academic debate. Still more importantly, the enhancement issue in sport is the canary in the coal mine for a much wider societal debate about how far the life sciences can and should take us, a profound question that seems to be unfolding as a key theme of the 21st century.
One Eye Open for Dual-Use Research
The recent federal investigation of Dr. Bruce Ivins, the Army bioterrorism researcher suspected of facilitating the 2001 anthrax attacks, is drawing media attention to dual-use research and could provide an opportune moment for biotech researchers to take another look at the rules that govern work with deadly pathogens. Michael Stebbins, director of biology policy for the Federation of American Scientists, outlined the basic considerations of an effective awareness program for this research in a recent Science Progress column, “The ‘What if?’ of Dual-Use Research Awareness.” Such an awareness program would allow scientists, law enforcement, biosafety officers, or institutional review boards to better recognize when research can be misused and how it can better comply with legal and ethical regulations.
Among other things, Stebbins recommends an independent and Internet-based reporting system which supplements dual-use awareness programs and allows researchers to report suspicious activity. He points out that if scientists are going to learn about the misuse of dangerous agents, then they need an outlet to report potential problems. In his suggested system, scientists would be able to report their concerns and receive advice and recommendations on the steps that they should or should not take.
The scientific community also has to improve its oversight over who has access to lethal substances. Following the 2001 attacks, there was a huge rise in biodefense research. Current estimations reveal that around 14,000 people at over 400 laboratories have access to chemicals that that can be used in the construction of bioweapons. The current federal oversight procedures are not expansive enough to ensure that all of these users are following security rules and reporting events—including the suspicious activity of co-workers—which could threaten fellow workers or the public.
On the other hand, our country is now more prepared to handle bioterrorist attacks. Research has led to vaccines which could potentially treat smallpox or the Ebola virus, and has also increased stockpiles of antibiotics that treat infectious agents.
Intern with Science Progress
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AP
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Doubling Down on NIH Funding
This week’s Policy Forum (subscription) in Science addresses the “structural disequilibria” in biomedical research that has resulted from the recent funding history of the National Institutes of Health. Addressing these problems would create a more hospitable career path for young researchers and yield more medical advances. Michael S. Teitelbaum begins the piece with details on the increasing difficulty for young researchers to obtain grants, a topic Sheril Kirshenbaum tackled in an article on the “Plight of the Postdoc”:
In 1998, about 32% of NIH competing Research Project Grant applications were successful; by 2007 the comparable success rate had declined to 21%. The percentage of NIH awardees aged 40 or under, already less than 23% in 1998, declined to just over 15% by 2005. Some of the reasons are well understood: First, adjusting for inflation, the value of the NIH budget has declined by about 13% from its peak in 2003. Second, the rapid annual increases from 1998 to 2003 were followed by 5 years of small annual decreases.
But Teitelbaum points out that the number of applications each year for grants has nearly doubled in the last ten years, due to the strengthening of the scientific research core as a whole between 1998 to 2003, when NIH funding was increased by 6 percent annually. He also argues that “when the increases from 2003 onward proved to be smaller than 6%,” the government undercut the benefits of the original increases. “In financial terms,” he writes, “one might say that the system became more highly leveraged, rendering it more vulnerable to unanticipated downward deflection of the increase in federal research funds.”
The article points out that this vulnerability may be due to the unique characteristics of the scientific job market: In many fields, when the demand or salary for a particular job decreases, so does the number of graduates seeking the job. Biomedical research does not follow this ebb-and-flow pattern, in part because international scientists can fill the slots. Moreover, some instability in funding streams results from use of NIH grant funds to pay for medical research facilities built on credit, as well as use of grant funds to pay for professor salaries.
Therefore, Teitelbaum argues that the problems at the NIH face are fundamentally “structural in nature” and “can be addressed only at the level of policy and administrative practice by the Congress and NIH itself.” He suggests that the NIH’s Office of Extramural Research could convene a panel to craft policies that would smooth out funding policies to counteract this vulnerability to boom-and-bust cycles.
He also acknowledges that “it may be possible to create broad political support for large annual NIH funding increases into the indefinite future.” CAP Senior Fellow and Science Progress adviser Tom Kalil has argued that Congress should again double the NIH budge by increasing funding 10 percent each year for ten years. Better oversight of internal funding decisions to counteract these “structural disequilibria” would only make that funding work harder for scientists and the American people.
Bipartisan Bill Would Promote Innovation in Reliable, Transparent Voting Technology
After every voting machine failure in recent election years, it has become more and more clear that proper oversight of voting technology is critical to the preservation of our democratic system. Congress and technology experts agree that investment in voting technology is necessary to ensure more reliable, efficient, and transparent elections. The Senate is currently considering bipartisan legislation to support innovation in voting machines.
Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Bob Burnett (R- UT), Chairwoman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, presented the Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act of 2008 (S.3212) yesterday, a negotiated bill which supports technology that will provide all voters with private, secure, and auditable voting services.
Dr. Juan E. Gilbert, Professor of Computer Science and Software at Auburn University, testified at the hearing where the bill was introduced and explained that it “provides for future innovation” by allowing “electronic records, audio, video, and pictorial records,” in addition to paper records, to serve as independent voting verification. While such technology for voters to verify their ballots does not yet widely exist, Gilbert believes this bill will make it a higher research priority for the tech community. The bill also requires that citizens with disabilities will be able to verify their ballots using the same devices as those without disabilities. “Technology and innovation are the routes to ensuring this type of access is available,” Gilbert said. Currently, disabled persons often require assistance to operate voting machines, but this strips them of the right to a confidential vote.
Professor Gilbert highlighted his own invention, Prime III, which allows voters to cast their ballots “using their voice and/or touch.” People who cannot see, hear, read, those with limited mobility, and even people without hands can privately and independently vote using Prime III’s multimodal user interface. Moreover, Prime III allows those with disabilities and those without to verify their ballots using the same uniform system. Gilbert noted government funds could enable similar research and development in voting technology. This “demonstrates the potential impact of federally funded research and the need for innovation,” he said.
The bill also provides protection for the intellectual property of technology vendors who develop new voting machines, which Gilbert said was a “great way to encourage vendors to openly participate in the improvement of software” for elections. In previous contested elections, candidates and advocacy groups have questioned the software running on voting machines. The new legislation mandates extensive software testing and certification through a full disclosure process. But with the IP protection, companies will be able to protect their investment while also disclosing their voting software to public scrutiny. Funding for pilot tests is a further provision of the bill, in order to ensure that approved products are once again inspected before heading to market.
What Took So Long?
Why did it take almost four months after the first report of a Salmonella St. Paul infection for the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control to find the grower responsible? Two congressional hearings yesterday and today aimed at understanding why this most recent food safety scare took so long to understand. First tomatoes were implicated in the outbreak, then the FDA declared certain varieties safe, which left various states scratching their heads as to why their tomatoes weren’t cleared. Then inspectors moved on to peppers, eventually confirming that serrano peppers from Mexico tested positive for the bacterial strain. Yet tomatoes have still not been officially cleared by the FDA. The most recent statements from the FDA warn against eating raw peppers and state that tomatoes are safe, but do not indicate that tomatoes were never involved in the outbreak. It was obvious during the hearings that tomato growers are upset that stigma still surrounds their product and continues to hurt sales.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Chairman of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture, called the Salmonella St. Paul outbreak the next saga of “outbreak roulette,” and asked “which industry will be next?” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), sponsor of the TRACE Act, H.R. 3485, which would strengthen the food industry’s traceability system, did not hesitate to call the FDA and CDC out on their faults. She called the food safety system “agonizingly slow.” In her opening statement, she asked, “Why is it that the FDA has jurisdiction over cheese pizzas, but the CDC has jurisdiction over pepperoni pizzas?”
Yesterday Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection at the FDA, shocked the audience by admitting that only three FDA investigators were currently in Mexico, and that none were stationed there permanently to check the food supply that enters the United States. But he was able to escape the most severe questioning by breaking the news that the FDA had only hours before discovered Salmonella St. Paul in the groundwater of a farm in Mexico that produced serrano peppers.
That did not save Bill Hubbard, former senior associate commissioner for policy, planning and legislation at the FDA, this morning, as he testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Hubbard was quick to discuss the flaws in his agency. He said that reduced funding has led to a reduced staff and a reduced ability to perform the agency’s essential duties. He also noted that while the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 requires that food industries be able to trace their food supply back one step and forward one step, the FDA receives only partial reports, if any, from many food producers.
DeGette came to his rescue by supporting his claim that not all of the FDA’s problems are their fault. The FDA had pushed for additions to the Bioterrorism Act that would have included electronic food tracing records, the identification of each box of tomatoes with individual farm lot numbers, and a consistent recording format, all of which were denied.
Ed Beckman of the California Tomato Cooperative argued today that his company could successfully trace back their tomatoes “in 35 minutes.” Parker Booth of Delta Prepack Company even brought physical evidence of how his company maintains efficient and reliable traceability. He held up a cardboard tomato box which had, printed on the side, the individual farm lot number that the tomatoes came from, along with other state identification codes. This code, provided by a commercial system called HarvestMark, labels all of his company’s tomato boxes, and costs about a penny per box. It could be a good idea to implement on a federal level.
House Moves to Regulate Unregulated Drug Delivery Systems
flick.com/SuperFantastic
An estimated 20.8 percent of all adults (45.3 million people) smoke cigarettes in the United States.
With the support of cigarette manufacturer Phillip Morris USA, the House voted Wednesday to approve legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco. According to The New York Times, the bill would give the FDA the authority to stipulate nicotine levels allowed in cigarettes sold to consumers, and the agency could mandate a nonaddictive threshold for the chemical.
Writing about the legislation in March, Michael Stebbins noted that without the ability to ban nicotine outright, the FDA would not have sufficient power:
A superficial glance at the bill reveals that it fails the logic test by requiring an agency charged with protecting the health of Americans with regulating a deadly product without the authority to ban it outright. But the alternative, of leaving Big Tobacco to freely manipulate their product to keep me and the rest of my stinky-fingered brethren addicted, is unacceptable.
Stebbins notes as well that “In the United States, cigarette smoking is responsible for about one in five deaths annually, or about 438,000 deaths per year; on average, these people die 13 years younger than non-smokers.” Moreover, “Annually, cigarette smoking costs more than $167 billion, based on lost productivity ($92 billion) and health care expenditures ($75.5 billion).” “Cigarettes,” he points out, “are unregulated drug delivery systems.”
With the ability to regulate tobacco, FDA could better protect the health of Americans and prevent young people from becoming early smokers. But if the lessons from past battles with the tobacco industry are any lesson, there may be fights on the horizon to defend the science that will put teeth in FDA’s authority. As David Michaels, author of Doubt Is Their Product, noted in an interview earlier this year, there are many industry tricks of the trade that “turn positive studies into negative ones or take one positive study and do a literature review which buries the positive study in what is essentially a whole mass of garbage so it looks like there is nothing there.” Let’s hope that legal arguments over the precise levels levels of nicotine allowed in cigarettes do not obscure the fact that the product kills.
Talking Carbon Tonight on Colbert
SOURCE: Walker & Company
We are living in the carbon age.
Former Time magazine-reporter-turned-environmental-policy-analyst Eric Roston will make his Colbert Report debut tonight talking about his new book, The Carbon Age.
Science Progress featured an interview with Roston earlier this month that ranged across the various scientific fields connected by the carbon atom. He explained why he wanted to write the book like this:
The book is also an attempt to say, “Alright look, lets just take a breather here for a second. Lets peel back some of these categories, look at something very fundamental, and see if we can’t come up with a way to rethink the way we think about the world.” If you retreat to carbon, which is the central structural element of all life and civilization, and you build up from the central element of our civilization, then you understand how energy and climate and personal health and industrial materials are all far more interrelated and interconnected than we give them credit for.
Roston isn’t the only science expert to sit down with Stephen Colbert in recent months. Physicist and author Brian Greene talked about the World Science Festival back in May. Contributing Editor Chris Mooney pointed out that talking science in such a hip setting is just what the Ph.D. ordered: “We can’t simply assume that traditional science journalists will carry the message of science to the whole population. Rather, we need almost the reverse process—for science to bring its message to the entirety of the media.”
So tune in to Comedy Central at 11:30 p.m. EST tonight and learn how carbon organizes your life.
Update: Watch Eric talk about how “carbon is not the enemy”:
Congress Bans Toxins in Toys, Beauty Products
The House and Senate agreed yesterday to ban three types of phthalates, chemicals that are common in plastics, perfumes, lotions, and shampoos, and that can disrupt normal hormone function. There is strong evidence the phthalates may damage the liver and kidneys and disrupt the development of reproductive organs. One research study found that “prenatal phthalate exposure at environmental levels can adversely affect male reproductive development in humans.” The Environmental Working Group maintains a fact sheet on the adverse effects of phthalates. The chemicals’ impact on young children is a particular concern, as their endocrine systems are still developing, and they might be chewing on plastic toys that contain phthalates.
The Washington Post reports that phthalates are so ubiquitous today that in one study, the Food and Drug Administration found traces of the chemicals in every one of its 1,000 subjects. Despite strong lobbying from the chemical industry, especially Exxon Mobil, Congress moved to outlaw the chemicals from commercial products, pending further research. The Post indicates that a White House spokesman stated that President Bush opposes the legislation. Sarah Vogel explained the scientific maneuvering that led to this much-needed oversight earlier this year at The Pump Handle. Describing a Senate hearing on bisphenol A and phthalates oversight, she wrote: “At stake is the means by which society determines chemical risks and benefit.”
Renewable Tax Credits Need Renewing
Before Congress lets out for recess, the Senate is expected to again consider extending the tax credits for renewable sources of energy that will otherwise expire at the end of this year. That the extension has already failed to pass twice this summer makes investors in solar and wind projects anxious, and many solar power companies are looking at relocating to other countries if the credits are not extended.
Spanish company Abengoa Solar has said they will pull the plug on a 280-megawatt solar-thermal plant currently planned in Arizona if the Senate does not pass the full eight-year extension, as the company expects it will take six years for them to get online (and thus, for the tax credits to apply). Sempra Generation has stated that a plan to develop 500 megawatts of solar power is contingent on the extension of the tax credits. To put that in perspective, approximately 150 megawatts of grid-connected photovoltaic capacity was installed in the United States in 2007. The expiration of the tax credits would also dampen the growth and innovation of the wind industry, which grew by 45 percent last year and, thanks in part to T. Boone Pickens, is expected to grow even more in the next few years.
Congress may be reluctant to pass legislation that will cost taxpayers more money. According to Time, an extension of the credit will cost taxpayers about $1 billion (equivalent, as the article points out, to about half a week of the Iraq war). But the cost to taxpayers is paltry compared to the cost of not encouraging the renewable industry. One consulting company reports that the expiration of the tax credit could result in the loss of 116,000 jobs and $19 billion of investments.
End-of-the-Week Review: HIV, OTA, IMF, GMOs
Here’s a quick look at some of the science policy discussions going on in the blog realm this week.
Effect Measure wonders if the unpublished CDC study reporting that up to 50 percent more Americans have HIV than we thought was just another victim of the administration’s suppression.
Michael Stebbins posted on Scientists and Engineers for America’s blog about the new, searchable OTA archive and included a video of Rush Holt talking about why OTA was awesome.
JR Minkel on Scientific American comments on a study (which is hotly contested by the IMF) that finds a correlation between IMF loans and tuberculosis deaths.
Bioethics.net’s Summer Johnson draws our attention to a particularly undesirable effect of high gas prices: cuts in home health services.
Curtis Brainard at CJR provides a very thorough analysis of the renewed interest in GM crops and their potential to solve the food crisis.
Kaid Benfield at NRDC’s Switchboard chides the environmental movement for failing to be more vocal about obesity and its environmental causes, and later in the week posts about how Google Maps can now help.
Origins of Dated Federal R&D Policy
The federal government has a long history of supporting innovation as a means of international competition, yet policies over the years have diminished its potential. In a recent article in Technology in Society, veteran science policy expert and Science Progress adviser Neal Lane highlights two pieces of legislation which are essential to understanding science and technology policy: the 1973 Mansfield Amendment and the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. The United States needs forward-thinking federal science and technology policies like these to drive the innovation economy in 21st century.
Following the Soviet launch of Sputnik I under President Eisenhower, federal funding of R&D skyrocketed. In addition to space-related R&D, defense R&D funding also grew substantially during this period, and again during the Reagan years. Lane explains that the second jump in defense R&D funding, away from basic science research and toward applied science and product development, was due to the Mansfield Amendment enacted in 1973.
[US federal government spending on defense and non-defense R&D, FYs 1955–2007 (in billions of constant FY2007 dollars)]
The Mansfield Amendment stipulated that all defense research be correlated with military application. This led to a departure from successful basic science research partnerships between defense agencies and universities immediately following World War II. After the war, funding was mostly funneled into the development and testing of large weapons and defense systems. Lane writes that in the decades following WWII, the Mansfield Amendment reflected “the public’s desire for practical outcomes.” In his national innovation agenda, Science Progress adviser Tom Kalil is critical of this overemphasis on short-term results at the expense of high-risk, high-return research at agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He points out that DARPA “is now making ‘go, no-go’ decisions about whether continue a research project a mere 12 to 18 months after its inception,” and university researchers are increasingly serving “as sub-contractors to defense companies.” As a result, they can no longer pursue long-term research projects that have the potential to yield breakthrough discoveries.
[Distribution of total annual research funding—percentage for selected federal agencies for FY2007. The figure is based on the President’s budget request, not the final appropriated amounts, however, the differences are small.]
Another result of this focus on immediate results is that the research community has changed the way it categorizes components of R&D. For example, “basic” research now includes “applied” science in the DoD budget. This change means the development of defense weapons can be categorized under basic research.
Private funding of R&D overtook federal investment in 1979 and the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act helped to widen this gap. Bayh-Dole allows universities, faculty researchers, small businesses, and nonprofits to obtain intellectual property rights covering inventions and discoveries resulting from federally funded research. This allows them to commercialize new technologies and streamlines the path to the marketplace. Although industrial support of university research is a small component of academic research expenditures, private industry now spends approximately $220 billion per year on R&D, about 70 percent of the total national investment in S&T. Because companies must demonstrate to stockholders the value of their R&D investments, they tend to focus more on short-term applied R&D, where useful results are highly probable. Together, these two pieces of legislation have long contributed to an increased focus on short-term R&D solutions and a widening gap between private and public funding of research.
[US R&D funding by source: federal government and private industry (non-federal funds) FYs 1953–2006 (in $ billions of constant FY2006 dollars).]
The effects of these policy restrictions on research funding for different priorities is apparent in the funding distribution to various federal agencies. Of the federal government’s $137.1 billion in 2007 funding allocated for the conduct of R&D, $81.7 billion was dedicated to defense-related work and $55.5 billion for nondefense R&D. Clearly then, the Department of Defense receives the most R&D funding. However, looking only at basic and applied research funding allocations, which total $54.8 billion, approximately $29 billion was set aside for the Department of Health and Human Services (and subsequently, the NIH), whereas only $6 billion in basic and applied research was set aside for the Department of Defense.
Lane argues that a reason for these funding decisions derives is the public’s desire for practical outcomes. As large returns on investment for new technologies became increasingly important to the public, the government became supportive of a funding dynamic that supported applied research. While federal agencies involved in research might govern as separate entities, they often change their focus to reflect national priorities set by the president and Congress.
Without strong presidential leadership and a White House Science Advisor who will prioritize long-term, federally funded research, Lane suggests that the United States cannot to maintain its global leadership in innovation.
Climate Change is a Humanitarian Problem (With Health Consequences for All)
A shifting climate brings with it a host of adverse health problems for people around the world, but the hardest hit are citizens of developing nations. Food and water security, vectorborne diseases, severe weather events, and armed conflicts all herald declining health and quality of life for populations that contributed few emissions to the problem, compared to their wealthy global neighbors.
This was the main message at a Capitol Hill briefing on global health and climate change yesterday hosted by the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Congressional Global Health Caucus. Panelists included Michael St. Louis from the Centers for Disease Control, Paul Epstein from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, and Pablo Suarez, a researcher on climate change and disasters for Oxfam America and Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre. They spoke about severe weather events that are already changing the quality of life for many in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia and emphasized that competition for land and water, and ensuing intertribal and international conflict, will only intensify in coming years due to an increasing world population and the mounting effects of global warming.
The panelists emphasized the need for adaptation policies to deal with these effects. Suarez provided an example of a village he has visited that, after several larger-than-normal floods, has switched from chickens to ducks as their main source of food, but many more adaptations are necessary to protect human health. Even if humans could stop emitting greenhouse gases today, we would continue to feel the effects of climate change for many years to come. To accompany the ambitious policies that are undoubtedly required to slow global warming, we also need to address the very real public health concerns that, according to Suarez, are already on the rise.
But the briefing was disappointingly incomplete in one major area, as it failed to address to health impacts that Americans will feel due to climate change. Epstein has been writing about the hazardous effect climate change will have on Americans’ health for years, but neglected to bring that to the conversation. Moreover, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report last week detailing the impacts climate change will have on the health of Americans, even as the agency announced it will continue to respond with inaction. Any movement on the issue will have to come from Congress, but without evidence that the health effects will reach industrialized nations, legislators and the public will feel little urgency.
When asked point blank about vulnerabilities in the United States, the most compelling example the panel offered is the increased number of asthma cases in inner city youth. However, the CDC Policy on Climate Change and Public Health offers up plenty of health concerns that are more severe and widespread, including vector-, food-, and water-borne diseases, as well as drowning and loss of property due to extreme weather events. A recent analysis even estimates that as a result of dehydration caused by warmer temperatures in the United States, there could be 2.25 million additional kidney stone cases each year, which would weigh down the health care industry with as much as $1.3 billion in additional annual treatment costs by 2050.
If activists want to change policy, these are the sorts of effects they need to hammer. Historically, the plight of sub-Saharan Africans or inner-city youth has not inspired the same fervent action as threats to the American way of life.
Moderator Edward Cameron of the World Bank was right to express his excitement that a focus on health can open up a new and influential avenue of discussion about climate change, just as the Stern Report did. For that focus to be effective though, it needs to be tailored to the audience.
Scientific Reasoning Should be the Starting Point in Policy Debates
Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) knows that scientific research, along with science and math education, are long-term investments in our future. A physicist and businessman, Foster made his way from the 14th district of Illinois to the House of Representatives in March, after a special election to replace former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. He joined Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), the two other physicists who bring their scientific knowledge to the House. In this video message, Foster outlines what he sees as the three largest challenges facing federal science policy: rational decision making, balancing basic research and commercialization, and ramping up STEM education.
By the Numbers: Pharmas Join Forces
Three big pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, Merck, and Eli Lilly, announced last week that they will join forces and create a joint venture called Enlight BioSciences that will help speed drug development. This announcement comes during a somewhat pessimistic period for drug companies. For example, another pharmaceutical company, Applied Biosystems, is concerned that, despite increasing profits, decreased spending in basic research may jeopardize its future.
According to their annual reports, Merck’s net profits have been steadily declining since 2002, and Pfizer experienced a sharp 29 percent drop in net profit in 2007. Eli Lilly, however, has enjoyed a steady increase in net profit since 2004.
Interestingly, Pfizer’s pharmaceutical revenues have actually increased by 11 percent since 2003—the drop in profit has been due to a 28 percent increase in costs. Merck’s situation is similar: since 2002, revenues have increased by about 11 percent, but costs have skyrocketed 32 percent.
Part of the problem may be that the number of new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for Merck and Pfizer has dropped dramatically in recent years. The Wall Street Journal cited increased concern for consumer safety as a reason the FDA is approving fewer and fewer drugs each year.
So is this why these once cut-throat competitors are now joining forces? Perhaps, but don’t forget that all things considered, the pharmaceutical industry is not exactly suffering. Merril Goozner reported in January 2008 that the sector had the highest profit margin, 20 percent, of various other profitable industries, including gas and oil, during the first nine months of 2007. Perhaps the formation of a joint company is the start of a new era for pharmaceutical companies, but either way, we can be sure that drug companies will continue to prosper for many years to come.
How to Decode Personal Genetic Testing
The burgeoning market for direct-to-consumer genetic testing heralds a new revolution in genetic medicine, but the the upstart industry is drawing considerable attention for the regulatory and privacy issues it raises. In Sunday’s Outlook section of the Washington Post, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Rick Weiss takes a close look at the personal impacts of these new testing services. Weiss suggests that we need to properly regulate this auspicious technology to harness its benefits:
The technology is undeniably impressive. For as little as $1,000, anybody who can drool into a mailing tube can now find out his or her genetic odds of getting any of 20 or more potentially debilitating diseases, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Most of these tests will not lead to a frank diagnosis, as happened with Gulcher. But discovering an inherited propensity toward a particular illness can motivate consumers — or, as they used to be known, patients — to get more frequent checkups, take preventive medicines or make lifestyle changes to try to ward off the specter of disease. At last, we seem to be on the cusp of the long-promised personalized-medicine revolution in which gene tests allow physicians to craft far more individualized and effective ways of keeping us well.
While the top officials from all of the major competing gene testing companies agreed that regulations over the industry must be standardized, Weiss does not believe this measure is enough. He calls upon the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration take the lead on crafting smart policy. Genetic testing companies should also be more transparent about their technology, test results, privacy, and security systems, and the potential use of client specimens for experimental purposes, he argues.
Weiss will discuss the article online this morning on the Washington Post website at 11 a.m. EST.
UPDATE: Weiss discusses the challenges of direct-to-consumer genetic testing in CAP’s latest installment of the Ask the Expert videos.
This Week In HIV/AIDS News
New research from the University of Texas and University College London, published yesterday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, suggests that a mutation in the Duffy antigen, or DARC, present on red blood cells may increase an individual’s chances of contracting HIV by 40 percent. The mutation spread over the course of several millennia in Africa and confers resistance to the world’s most prevalent malarial strain, but one that is no longer a serious threat to that continent.
According to the research, 90 percent of the African population express two copies of a mutation in DARC called DARC-negative. This mutation effectively removes the Duffy antigen from the surface of red blood cells, where it would normally bind to chemokines, small molecules that contribute to the immune response. Antigens like Duffy are large molecules that help generate antibodies and increase the response of the immune system.
However, the new study suggests that the mutated Duffy antigen that is so common in the African population actually helps the HIV virus attach to red blood cells, and more efficiently infect T cells. T cells are like the police chiefs of the immune system—they activate other cells and tell them to destroy various biological threats, such as cells that have been infected by viruses. Once T cells get infected by HIV, the body’s ability to destroy other cells infected by the virus is severely compromised.
But the DARC mutation is not completely devastating for those at risk of contracting HIV. The study indicates that “DARC-negative… is associated with slower disease progression.” In other words, HIV spreads slower when the body’s immune system is already slightly compromised by the mutation in DARC. So while individuals who are DARC negative are at a greater risk for contracting HIV, the same mutation may also slow the progression of the disease.
This research news comes just after the House and Senate passed bills allocating $50 billion for the global fight against AIDS and other diseases and lifting a travel ban for HIV-positive people that has been in place since 1987. However, this latest work on the mutation suggests that policymakers should also increase their commitment to funding HIV/AIDS research, especially because of further discouragement within the community about the possibilities for the development of a vaccine.
The United States Can Learn from Europe’s Genetic Privacy Laws
A commentary on Europe’s genetic privacy laws in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association reiterates how far we lag behind Europe in terms of regulating genetic information and how much we can learn from the holes in their policies. (Michael Rugnetta wrote recently here on Science Progress about British insurers moving voluntarily to protect genetic privacy.) Ine Van Hoyweghen and Klasien Horstman point out that Belgium enacted the first genetic privacy legislation in 1990, and the rest of Europe was quick to follow. The problems that arise in European law, and that may arise here in the United States as well, are problems of definition: as we learn more about our genome, more and more of our health can be linked back to our DNA, which leaves insurance and care providers in the position of having to determine what tests and information are considered “genetic.” Van Hoyweghen and Horstman also note that while those with genetic risk factors are protected, insurance costs for groups with nongenetic or lifestyle risk factors have sharply increased, creating a coverage disparity between groups who are similarly situated.
We are still learning to what extent our genomes influence our health and we still have lots of gaps to fill in our coverage of genetic privacy. GINA was an important first step, and we are fortunate to be able to draw on European experience to guide future legislation.