Tuesday, July 24, 2007

"How to Get Fewer Scientists"

Because everyone should know this, I quote at unusual length from Gene Sperling's op-ed piece in today's Washington Post.
(The Bush) administration's stingy NIH budgets over the past five years and its threat last week to veto the appropriations bill giving the NIH a small funding boost sound more like components of a Discourage Future Scientists Act.

The NIH budget doubled from $8.9 billion in 1992 to $20.5 billion in 2001 and then grew to $27 billion by 2003. Adjusting for inflation, however, the NIH has not gotten even a penny increase over the past four years. The administration's fiscal 2008 budget would cut NIH funding by $250 million. The proposed budget in the House has only a small increase above inflation -- yet the veto threat puts even this modest gesture at risk.

There is simply no policy that will inspire a new generation of scientists if current NIH funding trends are continued. The American Association for the Advancement of Science predicts that the percentage of NIH proposals receiving funds will be cut nearly in half by the end of 2007, compared with 2001 levels. The demoralization resulting from these cuts is already trickling down to our future scientists.
I encourage you to read the full article.

Comment: I suppose that the reduction in funding for biomedical research is due to the policy choice of going to war rather than help save lives, and the consequent budget disaster that has been one result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the Bush administration has an abysmal record in terms of its limitations on stem cell research and contraceptive approvals, and a very backward view of bioethics, it does not seem actually opposed to research to cure cancer or heart disease or other problems faced by the U.S. population. Still, the result is that more of us will die earlier than we would have otherwise, and more of use will be ill (and ill longer) and disabled than would have been possible with continuations of the Clinton administration policies on biomedical research. JAD

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