[olsen]

Science 23 March 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5819, p. 1646
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5819.1646


News of the Week
2008 BUDGET:
Senators Offer Sympathetic Ear to Complaints on NIH's Fiscal Slide
Jennifer Couzin
Two powerful champions of biomedical research blasted the White House's proposal to cut funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 and invited research leaders to vent their own frustrations at a Senate hearing this week. Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), who head the subcommittee that handles NIH funding, grilled NIH Director Elias Zerhouni on 19 March about the impact of what would be the fifth consecutive year of subinflationary budgets for NIH. They heard senior scientists describe a bleak research climate in which the percentage of funded NIH grant applications has dropped from 30% to 20%. And the senators promised to press for more money for biomedical research in 2008.

None of this was unexpected; Harkin and Specter helped win NIH a 2% increase in 2007 that the White House didn't request (Science, 23 February, p. 1062). More surprising was an impassioned speech by Zerhouni about the need for federally funded human embryonic stem cell research. In response to a question, he diverged from Administration policy, asserting that statements that adult stem cells can perform the same tasks as the embryonic variety "do not hold scientific water." He added that any attempt "to sideline NIH on an issue of such importance is shortsighted."



Among friends. NIH Director Elias Zerhouni offered senators a strong endorsement of stem cell research.
CREDIT: TOM WILLIAMS


President George W. Bush has ruled that only stem cell lines created before 9 August 2001 may be used in federally funded research. However, Zerhouni said, "it's very clear ... that these cell lines will not be sufficient to do all the research that we need to do." The Administration has declined to fund new human embryonic stem cell lines and said little about the extent to which federal dollars should back this research.
Zerhouni's call for boosting funding for human embryonic stem cell research comes as NIH is still struggling to apportion its $28.9 billion 2007 budget, enacted 5 weeks ago. Other agencies are struggling, too; the president's 2008 budget proposes "pretty much flat-funding everything other than defense," says Jon Retzlaff, director of legislative relations for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland. Some agencies that fund research in the physical sciences, including the National Science Foundation, would, however, receive real increases under the Administration's budget proposals (Science, 9 February, p. 750).

Ironically, even though Congress gave NIH a small increase in 2007, the agency is under a particular strain because it is coming off flush times in 1998 to 2003, when it saw its budget double. That prompted many universities to expand, construct new facilities, and recruit new investigators, says Retzlaff. Between 1998 and 2007, the number of standard investigator-initiated (R01) grants roughly doubled to about 50,000. Such expansion requires long-term commitments, researchers said, because the agency provides most researchers with at least a portion of their salary and covers overhead costs.

"We bought in" to the doubling, "and now we're getting cut," says Joan Brugge, chair of the cell biology department at Harvard Medical School, in an interview before she testified at the hearing. Brugge, who began to study cancer in college after her sister was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor, says that the slowdown is especially frustrating given recent advances in understanding the basic biology of cancer. "This not only forestalls progress but creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and anxiety," she told the senators.

Scientists also spoke of undergraduates and graduate students turning away from biomedical research and senior investigators leaving the field after being unable to secure NIH funding. Robert Siliciano, who studies HIV at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said he used to spend 30% of his time applying for grants. Now, he told the senators, it's jumped to 60%.

Universities are already mobilizing to lobby for more funding. Immediately after the Senate hearing, a coalition of nine institutions and 20 scientists, including the four who testified, released a glossy, 21-page report that describes recent strides in cancer, spinal cord injury, and other diseases, arguing that NIH grants are well spent and lamenting the effects of flat funding.

But beyond the anecdotes, the researchers and university administrators offered up few hard figures on the harm flat budgets are causing. "I know this will not work out to be a mathematical formula," said Specter, but he professed frustration at a lack of data that he might offer his more skeptical Senate colleagues. "What's going to happen to NIH if the budget is cut by $500 million?" he wanted to know. "It would be very helpful to know how many research projects you are undertaking and how many you're turning away."

The hearing was the Senate's opening move in its consideration of NIH's 2008 budget, a process that is expected to take at least until the fall.

[Radioguy]

I was never so proud to be employed at NIH as when Dr. Z said what was on his mind.