Last year, for the first time in seventy years, the number of cancer deaths dropped from the year before.
The American Cancer Society says it’s evidence that the country’s investment in cancer research is paying off.
But faculty at Dartmouth say those rewards could start to sputter as federal funding for cancer research loses steam.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Kerry Grens reports.
If the President’s proposed budget passes Congress, the National Cancer Institute will find itself forty million dollars shy of last year’s budget.
The current NCI budget is four point eight billion dollars, which it spends on funding much of the cancer research in this country.
The last few budget cycles have not kept pace with inflation.
And Doctor Mark Isreal—who is head of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth—says it shows.
Israel: We’re now currently, in the current year, seeing a situation where it is difficult to get grants funded even if there’s a universal agreement they are worthy of funding.
Grants from the NCI and the National Institutes of Health provide seventy seven percent of the funds for cancer research at Dartmouth.
Doctor Ethan Dmitrovsky is chair of pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School and also serves on panels that distribute federal research grants.
He says that five years ago—when the federal government was in the process of doubling the budget for medical research—it was much easier to get a proposal funded.
Dmitrovsky: During the period of doubling we were seeing roughly a quarter of those grants funded and now we’re seeing only one in ten. And that has had a very sobering effect on the scientific enterprise.
The Cancer Center at Dartmouth has had to restrict new hires and revise its plans for expanding research.
Doctor Dmitrovsky’s fear is that young talent will be discouraged from pursuing research and instead become practitioners.
And it isn’t just the laboratory that will feel the budget cuts.
The Cancer Center itself, the infrastructure—outside of research—is funded exclusively by the federal government.
Doctor Israel says its budget is shrinking too.
Isreal: This year not only aren’t we receiving a 2 or 3 percent increase to adjust for inflation, not only aren’t we receiving the money we were approved for, but we’re going to get 20% less than the amount that we were told we were going to get.
Israel predicts that a slip in research funding will lead to a deceleration in getting new therapies to patients.
Israel: There are literally 10s even 100s of drugs on the shelf or in development that ultimately need to come to clinic. That process will be severely impaired if the research enterprise isn’t supported.
Wendy Selig at the American Cancer Society says the country can’t afford not to fund cancer programs.
Selig: Cancer costs this country hundreds of billions of dollars every year in terms of direct costs as well as indirect costs: loss of productivity, suffering, loss of life. We can’t afford not to invest in more prevention, early detection, and therapies that are less toxic.
The Senate seems to agree to Selig’s logic.
It added to the President’s budget proposal two hundred forty million dollars for cancer research.
And a portion of another seven billion dollars would be distributed to other medical research and programs.
Wendy Selig says she hopes the House does the same when it takes up the budget resolution.
SOQ
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo