Scientific Research Funding

Just for your information, the National Institutes of Health (The NIH) is the primary source of funding for medical research in the U.S. Over the past several years (under G.W. Bush) the budget has grown at less than the rate of inflation and for the first time the budget is actually less this year than in 2005. Furthermore, with the rising costs of everything (supplies, energy, etc) it costs more money to do current research than in the past thus making the budget cuts even more severe. The NIH budget is about $28 billion total for 2006. Now I know that sounds like a lot, but in 2004 the U.S. spent $437 billion on the military alone. This lack of funding is now having a direct affect on the pace of research. People I know in my lab our being let go, post docs are looking for new careers, and PIs (principal investigators) are scrambling for funding. The lack of funding from the government often causes talented people to work for private companies instead of research institutes. Most of these companies are simply looking for the next Viagra (a lucrative product in other words) rather than doing actual research for the sake of science alone. Bush has recently reinforced his ignorance of the importance of medical research by vetoing (for their first time in his presidency) the stem cell bill. Great discoveries have been made in recent science and the rate of cancer deaths has declined, but many diseases could be cured in our lifetimes if there was a greater priority on scientific funding.