Medical Research Recession: Funding Flatlined for Diabetes, Cancer, Alzheimer's

Medical Research Recession: Funding Flatlined for Diabetes, Cancer, Alzheimer's

By Rick Weiss, Science Progress. Posted October 10, 2008.

The Wall Street bailout cost $700 billion. The entire National Institutes of Health budget is less than $30 billion -- and sinking.
The housing market wasn't the only bubble to get pricked of late. Consider the budget for the National Institutes of Health, the primary source of funding for U.S. biomedical researchers. It, too, has recently had the rug pulled out from under it. And while the negative impacts may not be as obvious or immediate as the fallout from the housing, credit and stock market crises, the repercussions of this pound-foolish parsimony promise to be massive.

Recall that between 1998 and 2003 the NIH budget underwent a long-overdue expansion. In a remarkable act of bipartisan solidarity -- and reflecting a broad appreciation that biomedical research is both an economic pump-primer and the best first step to conquering diseases -- Congress doubled the agency's budget over those five fiscal years.

Even more important than bolstering the work of hotshot scientists across the country, the move opened the doors to a new generation of young researchers with fresh ideas and enthusiasm. Laboratories grew. Scientists launched ambitious projects. And American leadership in the biomedical sciences seemed assured well into the future.

Then, immediately following that enlightened surge, something strange happened. It all stopped. The money dried up. Through the fiscal 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 budgets -- and again this year in 2008 -- the NIH was flat-funded. And despite a rising tide of concern, it looks like the same fate will recur in 2009.