BETHESDA, Md. – The U.S. could jeopardize its status as the most attractive place for science students to conduct research if Congress does not act to stop automatic across-the-board federal budget cuts set for next Friday, said National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins and a top researcher from Johns Hopkins University on Wednesday.
Of the $30 billion in funding NIH receives from the federal government, 5 percent, or $1.5 billion, will be lost, which will result in cuts to every research department, Collins said. Under a 2011 deal, the across-the-board cuts were scheduled in hopes Congress and the Obama administration would instead address deficits by reducing spending selectively.
The NIH cuts would mean a massive reduction in grants issued to promising young scientists, as well as the defunding of many grants that already exist, said Dr. Carol Greider, Nobel Prize winner and chair of the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
“We stand to lose our status as a [country] to go to innovate if we don’t support our young scientists,” Greiber said.
Collins said more than 80 percent of the public money received by NIH goes to research institutions around the country to support 400,000 students, researchers and staff.
Greider, whose lab receives NIH funding, said most of the research money she has received from NIH is not spent buying equipment or test tubes, but instead goes toward supporting students in the lab.
The $1.5 billion lost would translate into hundreds of grants that will not get paid this fiscal year across all 27 institutes and centers, Collins said, and he will have no flexibility to cut more from one center to save funding for another.
“Breakthroughs come from young scientists,” Greiber said. “It’s well established Nobel Prize work is usually done by people at the beginning of their careers, and this group is in jeopardy today.”
Greider said when she won the Nobel Prize in 1985, 33 percent of research proposals were funded. Today, only 17 percent are funded, and she said if the sequester occurs, that figure will drop to 15 percent. She said she doubts that her prize-winning research would be funded in today’s budgetary environment.
“This is not a spigot you turn off and turn back on again a year later,” Collins said. “If we lose the talents of this up and coming generation with all their dreams and visions, they’re not coming back.”
