Senate Appropriations Committee Plans to Include Additional Funds for NIH in a Second FY2008 Supplemental Bill
On July 16, Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), the Chair and Ranking Member, respectively, of the Senate Labor, Health
and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (L-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee, introduced legislation (S.3272) to provide an
additional $5.2 billion to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for fiscal year 2008 (FY2008). Specifically, the bill would allocate
$1.2 billion for the National Cancer Institute and the remaining $4 billion to the other NIH institutes. The announcement of the new
legislation coincided with a Senate L-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the fiscal year 2009 budget request for NIH on the same
day.
According to Senator Specter’s July 16
press release, the purpose of the $5.2 billion supplemental is to reestablish NIH funding at
levels that are consistent with inflation after five consecutive years of inflationary cuts to “provide the Institutes with the resources
to discover cures for cancer and other maladies.” Senators Specter and Harkin obtained the number through consultation with NIH and the
cancer research community.
At the Subcommittee hearing that day, Senator Specter stated that “funding for NIH is grossly insufficient, and Congress must do
something about this scandalous situation.” Senator Harkin further provided that “the National Institutes of Health is the premier
biomedical research agency in the world, [and] it is vital for the Congress to support our scientists as they search for treatments
and cures that could provide hope to millions of Americans.” The bill currently has six cosponsors, and the Committee on Appropriations
is considering it.
Although the Senators offered the bill as stand-alone legislation, their hope was that at least some of the funding would make its way into
the second FY2008 supplemental spending package that the Senate Appropriations Committee had planned to markup on July 22. Specifically,
Senator Harkin intends to put $500 million for NIH into the $50 billion spending package under similar terms as the $150 million that was
in the first emergency supplemental bill last month, whereby the money would be for distribution across the Institutes and Centers on a
pro-rata basis. The $500 million for NIH will be in the Chairman’s mark for the supplemental rather than in the form of an amendment.
After the Senate Appropriations Committee initially postponed its consideration of the second FY2008 supplemental spending bill from July
22 until July 24, FASEB President Richard Marchase, Ph.D., sent
letters to every member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urging
each of them to support Senator Harkin’s effort to provide additional funding for NIH in the second supplemental. Dr. Marchase further
sent an Action Alert to FASEB society members who live in states that have a senator on the Appropriations Committee to ask them to contact
their senator in support of the effort to fund NIH in the new supplemental appropriations bill.
Subsequently, however, on July 22, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-WV) issued a statement postponing the markup of
the second supplemental bill indefinitely until after Congress returns in September from its month-long August recess. In Chairman Byrd’s
words, “there is no opportunity to begin consideration of a supplemental appropriations bill during the next 10 days.” He added, however,
that “it is my understanding that the Senate Democratic Leadership is committed to bringing up the second emergency supplemental
appropriations bill in the Senate in September that will provide critical infrastructure funding and respond to national disasters, such as
the California wildfires, the Midwest floods, and Hurricane Katrina.”
Although the House of Representatives intends to markup and vote on a second FY2008 emergency supplemental bill as well, the White House
has not yet indicated a willingness to sign such a bill.
TOP OF PAGE
Dr. Elias Zerhouni Testifies in the Senate on the FY2009 Budget Request for NIH
On July 16, the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (L-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee met in open
session to hear testimony on the fiscal year 2009 budget request for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It was a hearing that the
Committee had planned to hold earlier this year and rescheduled. The witnesses included NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, M.D.; National Human
Genome Research Institute Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D.; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony
Fauci, M.D.; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Director Elizabeth Nabel, M.D.; and National Cancer Institute Director John
Niederhuber, M.D.
At the hearing, Senate L-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) provided NIH budget statistics and added that for
“the fifth year in a row, NIH funding failed to keep up with the costs of inflation.” Senate L-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking
Member Arlen Specter (R-PA) agreed, characterizing the NIH budget situation as “scandalous.” Accordingly, in his opening remarks, Chairman
Harkin announced his and Specter’s intention to introduce a supplemental fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill to add $5.2 billion to NIH’s
budget in order to keep pace with the rate of inflation.
Dr. Zerhouni described the “explosion” of new discoveries at NIH and reminded the panel that medical research requires long-term investment;
he further testified that the current funding levels could have serious consequences on the Institutes’ ability to perform research and
train and recruit future scientists. Dr. Zerhouni recommended that NIH fund 3,000 new scientists per year and pointed out that NIH cannot
meet that threshold with its current funds. Subcommittee members specifically asked the witnesses about the status of research on
particular diseases and disorders, such as autism, pandemic flu, cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder and childhood obesity.
The written testimony that NIH directors submitted for the hearing is available
here.
TOP OF PAGE
FASEB Participates in Government Forum and Coalition Statement on Dual Use Research and Biosecurity
FASEB President Richard Marchase, Ph.D., testified on behalf of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he serves as Vice President
of Research, during the U.S Government’s Public
Consultation on Proposed Oversight of Dual Use Research. The purpose of the meeting was to
gather stakeholder feedback on the
proposed framework for oversight of dual use research of concern, which the National Science Advisory
Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) produced last year. FASEB
commented extensively on the draft proposal at the time of its initial
introduction, and many of the stakeholders at the public forum, including Dr. Marchase, reiterated the concerns that FASEB initially
raised. Briefly, dual use research of concern (DURC) encompasses life science or other research that scientists intend to be beneficial
but that has the potential for misuse to create harm. The NSABB proposal involves a DURC oversight schema that includes attestations by
investigators as part of the grant funding and publication process, as well as a number of institutional oversight responsibilities.
In preparation for the meeting, a coalition of research groups, including FASEB, the Association for American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the
Association of American Universities (AAU), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Association for
State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), and the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR), issued a
joint statement on the
draft proposal. Although the groups largely based their message on FASEB’s prior statement, the coalition effort also drew attention to
the ambiguous compliance requirement provisions for institutions. There is tremendous concern within the research community that the
oversight system proposal could pose an enormous regulatory burden on both scientists and universities.
The research community was not the only stakeholder to voice its concern at the public consultation meeting. Some biosecurity experts
advocated even greater restrictions on DURC in order to ensure an appropriate mitigation of risk. While this point of view seemed to be
the exception, there was general consensus that the scientific community could benefit from an increase in awareness about the risk that
accompanies the potential misuse of biological research techniques and products. Many groups, including FASEB and the co-signers of the
coalition letter, lauded NSABB’s efforts to increase education resources for and outreach activities to the scientific community, as well
as its articulation of principles about the responsible communication of biomedical research.
While the time frame for and direction of future policy progress on this issue remain unclear, officials from the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS) outlined an “iterative” process to continue to collect feedback from the community and stressed the importance of
putting a system into place. Notwithstanding the urgency on the part of HHS, however, the White House issued a memorandum in May stating
that agencies would not issue new regulatory proposals after July 1 since there would not be time to issue new regulations for proposals
agencies might otherwise initiate thereafter prior to the end of the current Administration. Since the Federal Register has not published
the NSABB oversight system to date, and since publication therein constitutes the typical process by which agencies propose new regulations,
the likelihood that the framework NSABB has proposed will move toward codification prior to 2009 is slim.
TOP OF PAGE
PAGE 1 |
PAGE 2 |
GO BACK TO JULY 25,
WASHINGTON UPDATE | 
