"FLATLINERS" was a movie I never saw, and never will: fiction about bored
kids playing with death. In a hospital, thrill-seekers would let each other
temporarily "die" so their vital signs (that up-and-down line on a graph)
would go flat. Despite an A-level cast (Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland)
the whole concept disgusted me.
As stem cell research advocates, we fight so hard to preserve life-and to
deliberately risk throwing it away? I am not paying seven dollars to see
that.
In a real hospital, "flat-lining" means somebody's loved one is at risk.
And for research funding of the National Institutes of Health, (NIH),
"flat-lining" threatens us all.
First, a little background.
Much self-congratulation has been done by both political parties on the
"doubling"of the NIH budget, between 1998 and 2003, an effort of the Clinton
and Bush Administrations.
But to double an inadequate figure is not always a reason to celebrate.
If I make a dollar a year and I double my income, I still only have two
dollars, not exactly a thriving personal economy.
$29 billion to fund the war on chronic disease-- which America is currently
losing?
Or am I wrong? Maybe we are winning?
"Currently, seven of the most common chronic illnesses (including cancer,
diabetes, hypertension and stroke).cost the U.S. $1.3 trillion per year. by
2023, there will be an estimated 230 million cases of these diseases, at a
cost of $4.2 trillion."-A Broken Pipeline (copies available at
http://www.brokenpipeline.org).
Compare that to our total federal income tax receipts: $2 trillion.
There is no way to sugar-coat it; we need to triple or quadruple NIH
funding.
Instead, since 2003, the budget for the National Institutes of Health has
stayed flat-at a miserably insufficient $29 billion a year-- not even
adjusted for inflation!
"According to a commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine, "the
nation's biomedical research enterprise has never experienced a recession of
this magnitude or duration." (information sources at conclusion.)
What does this mean to the researchers, men and women whose lives are
dedicated to ending suffering?
Constance McKee, co-executive director of Americans for Cures Foundation,
forwarded me an excellent article I urge for your reading.
BTW, do you know Constance? If you come to our SOSCA conference April
12-13*, (hint, hint), look for an elegant woman with lion-blonde hair and a
runner's build. If you talk to her for very long, I guarantee your brain
will itch-she's smart, she cares, and she works, which is why she and Amy
Daly (any long-term research supporter will smile at hearing Daly's name)
are partners in leadership at AFCF, the legacy organization of the
Proposition 71 campaign. Check out the convention at
www.Americansforcures.org, register on line, come if you can!-more at the
end of this article.
Meanwhile, back at the broken pipeline:
On March 11, 2008, seven outstanding research institutions (Brown
University, Duke Medicine, Harvard University, Ohio State Medical Center,
Partners Health Care, UCLA, and Vanderbilt University) presented the results
of a year-long study on the effects of flat-lining funding of the NIH.
They did it the right way.
They had the overview, of course: ".the NIH is experiencing a dangerous
slowdown in funding. The year 2008 marks the agency's fifth consecutive year
of no real budgetary growth. a 13% drop in purchasing power since 2003."
But they went further. Instead of just babbling away about how the NIH
needs more money, they followed the careers of 12 outstanding young
scientists, showing how their lives were impacted by the shortsightedness of
inadequate funding.
People like Isla Garraway, M.D., Ph.D., at UCLA, whose life is dedicated to
ending prostate cancer: which killed her father. As she says:
"Prostate cancer is a very painful and hard way to end life. It is critical
to find better therapies. Targeting the stem cells in prostate cancer could
be a big breakthrough."
These are not fictional movie kids, playing: these are real-life workers.
They did everything right, took out endless college loans, investing not
just four years college for their BA, but also six years after that to get
their doctor's degree-and several years after that doing post-doctoral
studies, and then- but check this out:
"After four years of undergraduate education, students go on to earn an
advanced Ph.D. degree, which takes an average of six years. Next comes the
specialized training of a postdoctoral fellowship-sometimes three years, but
often five, six, or more-where (he or she) masters.laboratory research. Then
comes a junior faculty appointment-assistant professor-at a research
university. Only then does academic tenure become a possibility, and it is
entirely dependent on receiving that first RO1 grant."
As Nancy Andrews, M.D., Ph.D., Dean of Duke University Medical school puts
it:
"What a strange business this is: we stay in school forever. We have to
battle the system with only a one in eight or one in ten chance of getting
funded. We give up making a living until our forties. And we do it because
we want to help the world. What kind of crazy person would go for that?"
What kind of people? America's best: willing to scrape by, denying
themselves pleasure and ease through all their young years, giving up their
youth-- on the chance they may be able to help the world when they reach
middle age.
In 1970, the average age of a scientist getting his or her first grant was
34; today it is 43.
How many of us would hang around an extra nine years, hoping for a break,
knowing the odds are ten to one against us?
Even established scientists are not safe.
Jon Clardy, Ph.D, Harvard Medical School:
"The impact of flat funding has been felt all over.causing us to reduce the
size of our labs. People are working on conservative topics. And there will
be less international cooperation in the future, because people are feeling
less inclined to split resources."
The flat-lining of the NIH budget is forcing scientists to "downsize their
laboratories and abandon some of their most innovative and promising work."
Abandoning research which might help millions.
Consider deafness. Think how many people are being slowly enclosed in
silence-roughly a third of all Americans past sixty-- when cure might be
possible.
Ann Giersch, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's hospital:
"I've dissected the inner ears of all those different mice-those that lose
their hearing and those that don't-and those tissues are just sitting in the
freezer waiting. I haven't had the money or the help to go any further with
the experiments."
Above all, new scientists are at risk, the men and women who should be able
to work their way into a place where their training pays off for our
country and the world.
"These conditions may also be putting at risk a generation of young
researchers."
As Lee Riley, M.D., of UC Berkeley puts it:
".new investigators suddenly have to compete heavily against each other and
against senior investigators for grants. Many of them are leaving. This is a
crisis for the research community."
Wait, it gets worse.
"Rejected grants, revised and resubmitted, create a backlog of high-quality
research proposals, and young investigators often wait years longer...."
Given those odds, what is the likely outcome?
Many will see no choice except to go to work in some other field.
"Brown University's Tricia Serio: "When I started at Yale, there were 30
Ph.D.s in my program. As far as I know, I'm the only one who stayed in
academic science."
Elias Zerhouni,M.D., Director, National Institutes of Health:
"Without effective national policies to recruit young scientists to the
field, and support their research over the long term, in 10 to 15 years, we'll
have more scientists older than 65 than those younger than 35. This is not a
sustainable trend in biomedical research and must be addressed
aggressively."
The report's conclusion?
"Consistent and robust funding for the NIH. is in the national interest:
advancing the health of all people, strengthening the U.S. economy, and
enhancing U.S. competitiveness and global scientific leadership."
The full text of "A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a
Generation of Science at Risk", is available at
http://www.brokenpipeline.org.
I am also indebted to a very nice overview article done by Wendy Lawton of
Brown University
(http://www.brown.edu/Administraton/News_Bureau/2007-08/07-116.html),
"Report: Stagnant NIH Budgets May Derail Promising Researchers", based on
both "A Broken Pipeline" and the related report, "Within Our Grasp - Or
Slipping Away?" released one year earlier.
source: Don C. Reed
Rayilyn Brown
Board Member AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation
rbrown@xxxxxxxxx
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