Proposal would cut cancer institute budget again

[Judi Lynn]

Proposal would cut cancer institute budget again
Posted 1/28/2007 7:53 PM ET
By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY

Leading cancer experts say key research could come to a halt because of proposed spending cuts to the National Cancer Institute.

President Bush has proposed cutting the institute's budget for the second consecutive year. The cuts would reduce the NCI's 2007 budget by almost 1%, or $36 million, to just over $4.7 billion. Although NCI director John Niederhuber notes that the institute's final budget has not been set, he's concerned that Congress could shrink his budget by 5% to 10%.

During a visit recently to the National Institutes of Health, Bush said NCI funding is still relatively high and has doubled in the past decade. Bush also noted an American Cancer Society report showing that the number of cancer deaths dropped for the second year in a row, falling by 3,014 from 2003 to 2004.

"We're proud of the significant investment that we have made in cancer research," White House spokesman Tony Fratto says. "We're also proud of the results showing that researchers are delivering on that investment."
(snip/...)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-01-28-cancer-cuts_x.htm

[JohnnyLib2]

1. Compassionate conservatism at work again. Recommended

:grr: :grr: :grr:

[Liberty Belle]

2. K&R - keep this kicked and send to everyone you know.

Cancer research support must surely be favored by the overwhelming majority of people, regardless of party affilation.

[USA No. 1]

3. Horrendus.

[daleo]

4. Cure cancer or fight a pointless war?

The answer is clear, if you're a chimp.

[Olney Blue]

5. Laura? Will you be silent about this too?

[anitar1]

6. First cut, breast cancer, I'm sure. n/t

[Cabcere]

7. Un-bleeping-believable.

:grr: First the war, now this. How on earth these people can claim to be "pro-life" is beyond me. :shrug: K&R.

[harpboy_ak]

8. Time to get Lance on their case

Lance needs to get to Washington right away and start pushing for additional funding, along with universal health care. As an uninsurable pre-existing condition person, Bush's bogus tax cut would provide me and every uninsured with NOTHING.

Time for impeachment, Bush & Cheney both.

[Imalittleteapot]

9. Iraq "trickle down". nt KICK

[struggle4progress]

10. And here is what we should have all understood as a signal this would happen:

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 17, 2007

President Bush Participates in a Roundtable on Advances in Cancer Prevention
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland

11:11 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks, Michael. I appreciate you joining us. I love coming to the NIH, it is an amazing place. It is an amazing place because it is full of decent, caring, smart people, all aiming to save lives. And I truly believe the NIH is one of America's greatest assets. And it needs to be nourished.

And I'm real pleased to be working with Elias and the good folks who work here to make sure that there's ample resources to fund these incredible projects that are taking place. And we'll talk about some of them today. The purpose of the meeting is to let the American people understand what kind of work takes place here, and some of the practical applications of the discoveries that are being made. Obviously, we're all very concerned about cancer. And, John, thank you for joining us.

First, I'm pleased that we're funding cancer research. We're up about 25 percent or 26 percent since 2001; it's a commitment that I made when I first came to Washington, it's a commitment we're keeping ...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070117-2.html

When the SOB starts talking like that, there's usually a funding cut ahead ...

[ninkasi]

12. Yeah, he's predictable like that

Every time he uses some worthy program, or cause, as a photo op, the same group gets their funding slashed. It's been like that the whole 6 long, miserable years he has been squatting in the White House. I can't wait til he resigns, or is impeached. He's nothing but a cancer on the soul of the United States.

[sutz12]

18. Bushspeak...."You're doing a heckuva job!" then the axe. nt

[greymattermom]

11. it's worse than that

During the doubling of the NIH budget most of the medical schools put up fancy new research buildings like the one I just moved into. Now, they won't be able to pay the mortgages, as the money comes from indirect costs on NIH grants. So much for medical schools. Next will come closing a few of them, and we'll have fewer docs, or we'll need a lot more more H1B visas.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

13. If Bush gets cancer?

then he may think again

[Quantess]

14. He has a team of doctors tending to his every health concern.

Plus, that bastard is in good health. His fitness is one of the top national priorities.

[3waygeek]

22. Bush is a cancer

so of course he doesn't want a cure.

[Vidar]

15. Wouldn't want to find any real type of cure, would we?

[deacon]

16. Inexcusable

[cshldoc]

17. This is much more widespread than just the NCI!

Actually, this cut to NCI is concomitant with funding decreases or stays at 2006 levels (which already represent negative growth) in the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. This is having several effects: the first is that funding rates for grants are now hovering at 7-9 percent. This means that of 100 grants, each of which is pitched to support a scientist's laboratory and a handful of (poorly paid) graduate students and postdocs (also poorly paid in general), 91-93% will be rejected. Thus 9 of 10 students and postodocs will not have funding for research in FY2007. This is preposterous, since far more than 9% of grants submitted are worthy of funding (this according to the priority scores assigned them). So, you can imagine this is a survival of the fittest thing, right? I can tell you that EMINENT scientists are falling within the unfunded category, and they are losing staff and incurring a huge opportunity cost in lost research. The next effect of these funding cuts is that currently funded grants are being post facto REDUCED by up to 25% for the following year. For grants supporting complex multiple year experiments (which you have to propose in order to get funded), this is patently disastrous. Lab leaders are faced with staff reductions, materials reductions, or, choosing not to do the experiments. Of course, if people are forced to cut corners too much, this can damage the validity of the results they do manage to acquire. The final effect of these cuts is a secondary one: American scientists are choosing to leave publicly funded research and either drop out entirely, which represents a loss to the economy of the quarter-million dollars it spent to train these scientists to the PhD level as well as a loss (intangible I know) of future innovation and discovery.

What does this funding shortfall translate to? One example, quite typical, is that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, home to many Nobel prize winning researchers over the years, is facing a 10 million dollar shortfall for its 2007 operating year. That represents nearly a tenth of its operating budget. Also, make no mistake: this is not restricted to biomedical research. As hard as they are being hit, physicists and other hard sciences are being hit even harder. As an example, Brookhaven National Laboratory recently had to solicit 13 million dollars in private funding in order to keep its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider running, and will probably have to do something similar again this year unless things pick up in Congress.

What can you do? If you're a US voter, contact your congress folks and demand that they extent support for the NIH, NSF, and NCI. You can call them directly or you can use this form provided by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB).

[Zorra]

19. Figures. Bu*h is a cancer on America. nt

[RiffRandell]

20. Thanks for posting this.

The article mentions stopping some research of head and neck cancers. My husband finished treatment for Stage 3 head and neck cancer last March. So far he is doing great but it has a very high rate of recurrence. I emailed the article to his parents and brother as they all voted for Bush.

[Judi Lynn]

25. Welcome. I was horrified when I saw it. Best possible hope for your husband.

Hope his family will finally wake up when they see the article.

It's hard to believe, isn't it, that a country's President would dream of cutting back research funding?

[Djinnjinn]

21. Try walking in my mocs then, B-boy

My daughter (and only child) died from a brain tumor a year ago December, on the day before what should have been her 34th birthday. Too late for her, but not too late to spare other mothers the unending agony of burying a child because 'someone' decides that certain diseases aren't 'worthy' (read; profitable enough for the pharms because the number of sufferers is considered 'low') of funding.

Oh, yeah..I'll be writing my Congress-critters on THIS one!

[JohnnyLib2]

26. How awful.

We must keep fighting cancer and the others that take so many.

Here's a big (cyber) hug from a supporter of Compassionate Friends.

[diamidue]

23. American Cancer Society/National Cancer Institute

Is there any proof that the ACS or the NCI are responsible for the miniscule reduction of deaths during this period? Dropping by 3,000 (out of a total of 550,270 cancer deaths in 2004) could just be part of averaging.
Of course I want to see research carried out on cancer, but I would question whether the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute are too bloated and too interested in profits. The American Cancer Society is the world's wealthiest non-profit; has been around over 60 years (since 1945), and cancer deaths go down one year by 3,000? This is success?

Maybe it does warrant a second look at where we are putting our cancer monies - maybe there are better alternatives for research.

http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/acs/wealthiest_links.htm
http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/nci/why_prevent.htm

[Megahurtz]

24. They Would Just Prefer That

the weak, poor, disabled, and old, just go and die.
So then the Wealthy could flourish.
That's why they would do something like this.

[barb162]

27. Outrageous!

Simply outrageous. He's got all kinds of federal money for Halliburton though