A BIOTECH CALL TO ARMS
The US National Institutes of Health is the global flagship institution for biomedical research, and its funding is the catalyst for billions of dollars in private research investment. Yet, federal funding for the NIH has floundered in the past several years, and the administration's most recent budget proposal for fiscal year 2008 would continue this dangerous trend. Since 2003, the purchasing power of the NIH has decreased by close to 12%. The new congress recently voted to change course, but fiscal constraints limited even their increase in NIH's fiscal-year 2007 funding to just two percent - substantially less than the 2006 rate of biomedical inflation. The time has come for scientists, business leaders, patients, and the general public to tell our leaders that federal medical-research investment is essential and deserves to see increased funding.
Invitrogen has joined with many other life sciences companies - including Applied Biosystems, Cepheid, Allergan, Affymetrix, Promega, and Target Discovery - to educate lawmakers about how crucial funding the NIH is to the advancement of human health. We at Invitrogen are also a part of the Campaign for Medical Research (CMR), a coalition for business, scientific societies, patient advocates, and academics working on behalf of stable NIH funding growth. I am co-chairing a corporate council effort at CMR to engage more of my colleagues in this important work. We are also engaged with life science trade associations - BIOCOM, the California Healthcare Institute (CHI), and BIO - to raise the priority NIH funding has on these organizations' advocacy agendas, and to collect the data needed to make a compelling case for the importance of NIH funding to their respective members.
A thriving NIH is good for the entire biomedical community, yet industry has largely left NIH advocacy to others. The business community can and should be supplementing the work these groups are doing in Washington and at the grass-roots level with efforts of our own.
What can companies do? Invite your local congressperson to your facility for a visit and explain how commercial research and development builds on NIH-funded discoveries and the work of NIH-supported scientists. Post the facts around NIH funding, along with a draft letter to your members of Congress, on your company intranet and encourage employees with interest in the issue to use it as the basis for their own communication with Congress. Join your regional or national trade association, or engage actively with those you are already a member of, and encourage the associations' involvement in the NIH debate. Sit down and write an email to your elected official, asking him or her to support an NIH budget that at least keeps up with biomedical inflation.
Many company executives have the mistaken impression it is too difficult to influence policymakers' decision-making on issues like NIH funding. Others rightly appreciate that the federal budget is being squeezed overall by many competing priorities. Despite these challenges, choices will be made in the coming months about where to allocate federal resources, and our voice can make a difference if we create clear and compelling arguments and choose to take a stand. The devastation of Alzheimer's disease among baby boomers alone is projected to cost the federal government more than $ 1trillion. Faced with such a looming budgetary tidal wave, a $30 billion investment in federal biomedical research is hardly an extravagance for addressing today's and tomorrow's healthcare challenges.
Two-thirds of the most important drugs produced over a three-decade period leveraged federally funded research work, including AZT for HIV and Tamoxafin for breast cancer. Moreover, NIH efforts have produced dramatic success in areas such as cardiovascular health, reducing annual US deaths due to heart disease by 75%. These successes can be replicated and expanded upon if we all contribute to educating policymakers about the ongoing importance of the NIH investment.
