Research advocates call for big hike in NIH grants

Can the research community make a case that increased research spending should become part of the upcoming stimulus legislation? The Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative thinks so.

In a letter to the state's Congressional group--a set of sympathetic lawmakers that includes Senator Ted Kennedy--the group maintains that for every NIH grant that is awarded, seven new jobs are generated. And the collaborative insists that the math provides solid grounds for significantly increasing the amount of money that pours through the National Institutes of Health and into research labs around the country.

Over the past five years, they say, federal funding has declined 13 percent when adjusted for inflation. Now, only two out of every 10 grant requests are funded. And the shortfall has made life hard for scores of researchers. Another relevant number in their appeal: the average age of a biomedical researcher in the U.S. is 43 and rising.

"The result is a slowdown in scientific progress, a reduction in the new business spin-outs derived from biomedical research and a delay in the delivery of new therapies to patients," says the collaborative. "But, an even more insidious consequence of this erosion of NIH support is the way it has discouraged the next generation of scientific leaders from pursuing careers in biomedical research."

The collaborative is made up of a group of heavy hitters in the research community. It includes Drew Faust, the president of Harvard, UMass President Jack Wilson and Susan Hockfield, the president of MIT. Those universities have attracted millions of research dollars every year.

- check out the report in Mass High Tech

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