"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
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.brokenpi
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
Meanwhile, back at the broken pipeline:
On
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—assistan
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?
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,
"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.,
"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.
"
Elias Zerhouni,M.D.
"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
The full text of "A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk", is available at http://www.brokenpi
I am also indebted to a very nice overview article done by Wendy Lawton of Brown University (http://www.brown.
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