2 weeks Ago
I have spent my entire professional career working as a scientist, with a major emphasis on teaching and training students who become doctors, health professionals, and other scientists. Like all of my colleagues, I am deeply troubled by recent changes in U.S.
federal programs, grant funding and basic science support. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) is the star player here, and is under pressure from multiple directions. A decision earlier this year aimed to cut $4 billion through reduction in “overhead costs,” an easily misunderstood fraction.
The basic idea: if a cancer researcher at UVa or a drug researcher at Virginia Tech earns a grant which will directly cover lab supplies and salary to research assistants, who pays the expenses for the building and basic utilities? That’s where the overhead costs come in. In addition, some current grants were frozen, and the ability to consider new, worthy research projects has been curtailed. Will this save money? Undoubtedly, in the short term.
But it’s like a family deciding to stop paying home, health, and life insurance — a poor long term decision. A recent study from the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrates that more than 99% of drugs recently approved by the FDA had funding along the way from the NIH. So, if you are a cancer survivor (or know one), you have benefitted tremendously from the NIH.
And the U.S. is the top pharmaceutical manufacturing nation in the world (followed next by China).
The drugs produced in the U.S. are worth more than $500 billion per year, a tremendous driver of our economy.
For a less direct example, the Human Genome Project, now more than 20 years past, generated $796 billion in economic investment for a federal cost of $3.8 billion. Investment in biomedical research is not just beneficial to individuals, it drives our economy and helps us to maintain our premier place in the world.
There is no doubt–the U.S. is first in biomedical research and biomedical industry, but anyone with a genuine interest in keeping America first should support continued and robust support for science.
Paul Cabe, Raphine.
