Comments on: Flat Funding of Biomedical Research: The Threat to America’s Health

By: Recovery Act Drives Record Number of NIH Grant Applications | Highlight HEALTH

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:07:24 +0000

[...] budget, excluding the $10.4 billion received this year in stimulus spending [5]. This continues a trend of flat or below-inflation funding for the NIH since 2003. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claims that since the NIH received $10.4 [...]

By: Biomedical Research Rock Stars | Highlight HEALTH

Biomedical Research Rock Stars | Highlight HEALTH — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:25:40 +0000

[...] A new public service campaign called the Rock Stars of Science (ROCK S.O.S.) features eleven of America’s leading biomedical research scientists appearing alongside rock stars such as Joe Perry, Sheryl Crow, will.i.am, Seal and Josh Groban. The campaign is designed to increase public awareness of the researchers and their work while showcasing the need for increased science funding. Although biomedical research received additional funding earlier this year through the economic stimulus, continued investment is critical for the development of future advances. Indeed, just last year a report writing by a consortium of seven institutions warned that the flat funding of biomedical research was a threat to America’s health. [...]

By: Richard Ryan

Richard Ryan — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:22:13 +0000

I agree with Walter that if you reduce funding levels then innovation is bound to be stifled as a result. If funding is not in place to guarantee jobs, equipment or even spaces in labs how can research be expected to progress?

I appreciated your report, but read the news with a distinct sense of sadness. It’s simply the state of the world today that people will follow income over their calling. After all, we all have to survive.

By: Walter

Walter — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:12:34 +0000

Hi Dr. Marshall: Respectfully, I disagree that reduced funding levels don’t stifle innovation. Perhaps not in individual cases as you describe, but industry-wide I believe there is an impact.

Here’s why: with an increase in biomedical scientists over the past 10 years, there has been a concomitant decrease in NIH funding. Since grant funding includes personnel costs, the question is “how do you pay those people?”

Additionally, many of the young scientists I have worked with have left research because the prospects of fighting an uphill battle for funding didn’t appeal to them. Most research institutions expect assistant professors to have an RO1 within 3-5 years, and there are significantly less RO1 applications funded today than there were 10 years ago.

By: Prof Trevor Marshall

Prof Trevor Marshall — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:58:21 +0000

When I started my Biomedical Research career in 1978, there was a sense that nothing was impossible, that science was on the verge of conquering all illness. Money wasn’t an issue, we were motivated young scientists – we didn’t need money, we needed ideas…

We ourselves made some breakthroughs in the treatment of infertility and cryptorchidism without any significant grant monies. At the University of Western Australia, my colleague, Dr Barry Marshall, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine, discovered Helicobacter Pylori essentially using excess Departmental funds.

Barry didn’t have to persuade his peers that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria before he could get the grants needed to prove it up. The manner in which medical science has consolidated into a money-making machine is a travesty. The Public needs to start looking back through history, and identify which of the major breakthroughs came about as a result of NIH-Style funding? (here is a clue – IMO the last cure developed for a disease was the Polio vaccine…)

History has not shown there to be any significant correlation between the level of research funding and the cure(s) which have resulted from that research.