Budgetary battles burden trial funding.
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: After six months of uncertainty, the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups celebrated a victory of sorts in late May when the National Cancer Institute bumped up funding for cancer drug trials by $4 million and did not implement a threatened 10 percent budget cut. It was the first funding increase since lawmakers began to tighten their spigot for federal research funding in 2003.
For the cancer groups, which mount half of all federally funded cancer trials and whose physician members care for half of all patients in the United States who participate in those trials, the turnabout was a step in the right direction. Still, it’s a long way from the halcyon days of a decade ago, when an explosion of federal research funding drove new drug development. In recent years, federal funding has flattened and the corrosive power of biomedical inflation — which runs higher than the consumer rate — has been eating away at research efforts.
“What’s not appreciated is that when you develop flat funding after years of growth, you’re decreasing — at least at an inflationary rate — year to year. The funding and buying power of the National Institutes of Health is decreasing,” says Robert Comis, MD, president and chairman of the coalition.
To illustrate that point, John Niederhuber, MD, director of the NCI, told Congress recently that the institute rejected 179 grant proposals last year that once would have merited funding.
Like most research groups, the cancer coalition was pushing for a significant increase in federal funds for the NIH this year. But with the federal budget now running consistently in the red, research advocates of every stripe have had to retreat, instead drawing a defensive line around a partial inflationary raise.
So far, Congress has come up with two sets of proposed budget hikes for the NIH: A 3.4 percent hike floated by the Senate, and a slimmer 2.4 percent raise from the House. But at the same time, NIH is expected to triple its $100 million mandate for HIV/AIDS research, which would cut any proposed increase available for other fields well below the inflationary mark.
The government’s role in medical research will never be replaced by private ventures, says Robert Comis, MD, president of the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups.
To the White House, Congress’s numbers don’t add up. President Bush has promised to veto any spending bill that doesn’t reflect his own approach to deficit reduction, and that could spell trouble for any proposal that would add money to the NIH budget.
The issue is not limited to the academic world. NIH “is an important venue for biotechnology companies in early-stage research,” says Chris Colwell, director of healthcare regulatory affairs at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. “It’s also important to biotechnology companies because they often end up” partnering with academic groups to carry a program through to commercialization. BIO urged approval of a $30.8 billion NIH budget.
Source: PubMed Central
Author: John Carroll
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2399919043