US Federal Government Shutdown Freezes NIH Operations

Yes. You read correctly. The United States Federal government entered a shutdown on October 1, 2013 and for 17 days. The first question that came to my mind “Can they even do that?”. Believe it or not, yes they can! Setting aside the complex political fight behind that (generally because of President Obama healthcare law, aka ObamaCare), let me walk you through what relates to us; biomedical researchers.

Photo credit: originally published on Cambria Press

The Washington Post estimated that 800,000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed. However, 1.3 million "essential" federal workers, 1.4 million active-duty military members, 500,000 Postal Service workers, and other employees in independently-funded agencies were required to report to work with no expectation to receive their salaries.

As a result, the NIH released a statement that all its operations, including grant submissions, reviews and funding, have been suspended due to the lapse in federal funding. The NIH resumed its operations on October 17, 2013.

This reminds me with an editorial published in JAMA earlier this year by Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Emanuel predicted within the lines of his editorial what we face now.

Dr. Emanuel summarizes four factors that contribute to the “erosion of support for the NIH”. These include:

• First, politicization of science by losing the bipartisan agreement that long existed in the US.
• Second, disappearance of strong Congressional champions of the NIH, most importantly, John Porter (R, IL – Retired), Arlen Specter (D, PA – Died), and Ted Kennedy (D, MA – Died).
• Third, the congress may have thought that NIH funding has been sorted out after the 2003 doubling of its budget.
• Fourth, the continuous increase in the US federal budget deficit over $1 trillion makes the case harder to justify that NIH funding for biomedical research should be a top priority.

Dr. Emanuel proposes three solutions that could improve the dire NIH funding situation.

• First, pro-NIH congressional members need to be identified, educated, and cultivated, to lead the fight for increasing funding for biomedical research.
• Second, researchers have to do a better job of explaining the value of biomedical research, and stop promising cost reductions.
• Third, physician researchers should focus on efficient delivery of patient care, rather than just increased profit from clinical services. This will make the health-related expenditures must stop increasing faster than GDP, allowing more room to ask for more NIH funding.

 The editorial closes with:

“Most importantly, the NIH and the larger biomedical research community need to direct their considerable talents and resources to developing biomedical technologies that are not just “incredibly exciting” but also cost lowering and value enhancing. Many tremendous triumphs of NIH research, such as the Haemophilus influenza type B vaccine, did just that.”

Well, This says it all!