Dark Days for Medical Research

[babylonsister]

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/dark-days-for-medical-research/280205/

Dark Days for Medical Research
Between the sequester and the shutdown, repeated hits to research funding may have serious consequences for scientific advancement.
Mark Micheli Oct 2 2013, 5:08 PM ET


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Sequestration was painful enough for the medical research community. As a result of the budget cuts, the life sciences are projected to lose 20,500 jobs this year. NIH’s fiscal 2013 budget fell by $1.71 billion, or 5.5 percent. “That’s the size of my whole budget for a year,” said Dr. Story Landis, referring to the $1.6 billion budget she oversees as Director of the Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. If sequestration is not reversed, NIH could lose $19 billion over the next decade. And after 10 years of flat budgets worn away by inflation, the NIH’s purchasing power has been cut by almost 25 percent compared to a decade ago—a weakened stature that is a far cry from the period between 1998 and 2003, when the NIH budget was doubled.

Now, until the government reopens, the NIH will halt action on grant applications and awards—meaning all new medical research is grounded—and the NIH Clinical Center will not admit new patients.

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Accounting for the sequester, Collins recently told Congress that NIH intends to award 650 fewer grants, compared with 2012, any number of which he contends could have led to a significant discovery.

“It is hard to prove a negative,” said Collins. “We will not know what grant that was going to lead to the next breakthrough in cancer research didn't quite make the cut. We will not know what brilliant scientists, who were going to win a Nobel Prize, basically gave up because of the failure to get support from the current system and decided to do something else or move to another country. We won’t know. That is the sad tale that is wrapped up in all of this.”

Privately, those in Congress and at NIH hope the looming debt ceiling debate might present hope for restoring NIH’s funding. That a deal for NIH is possible. But with Washington’s dysfunction at an all time high, as evidenced by the shutdown, hope is fraying.

“It's unimaginable that our country, that prides itself on science, technology, innovation and reason, would have allowed this outcome to occur,” said Collins. “But here we are, I did not imagine this.”

[Barack_America]

1. When times were "good", approval rates for grants were around 7%

...and the entire NIH operated on $30-40 billion per year.

That's when I left. I can't imagine the number of scientists leaving academic research now, and the numbers not even bothering to apply to graduate school.