WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- President Bush's budget proposal for 2004 released Monday only allocates a 2 percent increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health, essentially halting the double-digit increases NIH has come to expect over each of the past five years.
Medical researchers and patient groups said the budget shortfall could delay progress in developing new medical therapies. A bipartisan group of senators responded by announcing their intentions to introduce legislation to triple the NIH budget over a 10-year span.
The NIH, which funds basic science and medical research that could lead to new treatments for diseases, has seen annual budget increases averaging about 13 percent for the past five years as part of a program approved by Congress to double the agency's budget.
The doubling was scheduled to be completed with fiscal year 2003's budget -- although Congress has yet to approve the president's request for NIH. Bush's budget for FY 2004 calls for only a 2 percent increase, making NIH's total budget $27.9 billion.
Despite the limited increase, Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, said, "President Bush is committed to finding cures and treatments for cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases."
Thompson noted, "as a result of one-time projects being funded in fiscal year 2003 ... actual NIH research investment will rise by $1.9 billion, or 7.5 percent." The one-time projects went for bioterrorism funding, including construction of new facilities and the purchase of anthrax vaccine.
"It's a pretty brutal drop-off," Mary Woolley, president of Research America, a group comprised of medical researchers and patient advocacy groups, said of Bush's proposed NIH budget.
Woolley told UPI public opinion polls show more than 90 percent of Americans favor increased funding of medical research to assure the United States remains the world leader in that field. "We can't do that with a 2 percent investment," she said.
"It will mean that many grants can't be funded," Woolley said. "That will mean many researchers ... are going to become discouraged and also will have to seek alternative employment." This in turn could lead to a shortage of breakthroughs in biomedical research that could hinder finding new treatments for disease.
Bush's budget proposal likely will be strongly challenged in Congress. For example, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who led the original effort to double NIH's budget, plans to introduce a bill to triple the agency's budget by FY 2008.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who will co-sponsor the Specter bill, said Bush's budget "undermines the efforts of our best researchers and scientists to protect Americans from the threats of cancer, heart disease and other terrible diseases."
Specter's bill might require cuts for other agencies.
"The subcommittee will review the overall budgets for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education to see if we can establish a higher priority for the president's budget for NIH," Specter -- who chairs a Senate subcommittee that oversees appropriations for health, education and labor -- told United Press International.
"While it is a very tight budget for all three departments, the subcommittee has been successful in the past for finding funds for NIH because of its important mission," Specter added.
"The ... increase is the lowest since 1994 and well below the 13 percent average increase over the last 5 years," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a written statement.
"Cancer research will suffer at (the National Cancer Institute)," Kennedy said. "The president's budget will require cuts in current ongoing grants and allow no increase in new or renewal grants," he said, adding, "patients will have decreased access to clinical trials" of experimental cancer medications.
"The bypass budget (passed by Congress) requested $223 million to double the rate at which (clinical) trials are completed," Kennedy said. "Under the president's budget, this goal will be unattainable."
Speaking on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md., Monday, Bush called for Congress to allocate $890 million next year to initiate Project Bioshield, a $6 billion, 10-year program aimed at speeding the development of new treatments for biological weapons.
"My budget requests almost $6 billion to quickly make available treatments" for biological weapons such as anthrax, Ebola and plague, Bush said.
The money will be used to "develop and stockpile these vaccines and treatments ... in huge amounts, sufficient to meet any emergency that may come," the president said. The funding also will be used to develop a safer smallpox vaccine, treatments for botulinum toxin and devices to quickly detect infection with a biowarfare agent.
