NIH officials say Bush budget threatens staff, research
Officials say they're already losing young scientists and cutting back on crucial research efforts.
National Institutes of Health brass warned appropriators Friday they are losing young scientists and cutting back on crucial research efforts, and they fear the situation could worsen in the face of a looming budget cut.
Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and ranking member Arlen Specter, R-Pa., plan to use the testimony as ammunition to stave off a $328 million cut President Bush proposed for fiscal 2008.
NIH directors of four institutes that focus on chronic diseases ticked off several studies they have downsized: a clinical trial on heart disease indicators in Hispanics, initiatives in regenerative medicine used to replace tissue, a comparison of surgical and non-surgical remedies for lower back pain and dissemination nationwide of results of a study of genetic markers that can be used to identify osteoarthritis. Extra money, the directors said, would be used to train researchers and maintain clinical investigations.
"I'm particularly concerned about the effects of our budget on young people," said Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. College students interested in medicine are discouraged by a consistently rocky budget forecast, said Nabel, who was backed up by the other directors.
Stephen Katz, director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, also used the budget forum as an opportunity, as NIH Director Elias Zerhouni did a month ago, to make the case for increased funding for stem cell research. He honed in on regenerative therapy, which could be used for treatments that could eliminate hip replacements and re-grow kidney tissue for diabetes patients.
Researchers cannot study regenerative therapy without studying stem cells, Katz emphasized. "You can't do one without the other so you have to invest in the cells that will grow the tissue," he said.
Bush froze funding for embryonic stem cell research based on moral concerns, allowing study only of stem cell lines that were already being used for research when he took office. The president's total proposed 2008 budget for NIH is $28.6 billion, a cut from the $28.9 billion in NIH spending for the current fiscal year.