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At a time when the White House has been flirting with the
idea of slashing billions from the budget of the National Institutes of Health,
a group of executives, government officials, and academic leaders recently went
to Washington, D.C. to make the case for the NIH’s continued funding.
The meeting, organized by General Atlantic CEO William
E. Ford, involved 27 people, including NIH Director Francis Collins, Vice
President Mike Pence, nine White House officials, and a cadre of top names in
the academic and biotech worlds.
In case you’re not familiar with what the NIH does, it’s
basically the largest biomedical research agency
in the world. Its team of scientists does research on treating and
preventing chronic diseases, curing infectious diseases, using new medical
technologies to promote wellness, and healthy aging. The agency also provides
grants to researchers at universities and other academic institutions. In other
words, the NIH is a pretty important part of the U.S. health infrastructure.
Although Congress granted the NIH a $34 billion budget for 2017, Trump’s proposed “skinny budget” for the fiscal year 2018 (which begins
in October 2017) reduces
the NIH’s budget by $5.8 billion.
The point the White House visitors were trying to make is
that private investment is not an adequate substitute for the NIH’s support for
research at colleges and universities. They also said the odds of winning NIH funding
for that research are getting slimmer and slimmer because the organization’s
budget has stayed flat for years.
The group worries that Trump’s immigration policies are
making it harder to recruit foreign scientists as well. University of Texas
heart disease researcher Helen Hobbs said her Chinese postdocs are now taking
jobs in China rather than staying in the U.S.
“Federal support for fundamental science in academia is the
driver of national innovation, leading to new medicines that improve quality of
life and longevity and make major contributions to job and economic growth,” said
Stanford University President Richard P. Lifton. “Biotechnology took off in
this country because of U.S. leadership in federal support for science. Our
system is the envy of the world.”
Collins tried to drive the point home by noting how funding the
NIH will check two boxes on Trump’s priority list: jobs and the healthcare
budget.
Their tag-team approach may have had the desired effect. According
to Ford, the two-hour meeting went well. “The members of the new administration
we met with were very receptive to our message, and I’m confident that a
productive dialogue has begun,” he said.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative President of Science Cori
Bargmann agreed. “The message in the room was heard loud and clear: We need the
NIH! And we need it now more than ever,” she
wrote in a Facebook post just after the meeting.
People may have emerged from the meeting optimistic, but
nobody talked about the elephant in the room—the proposed cuts to NIH’s 2018
budget.
Are the NIH’s funding prospects going to improve because of
the meeting? “I think time will tell,”
Collins said.
