NIH Faces Spending Troubles

By Neil Munro and Marilyn Werber Serafini, National Journal

WASHINGTON — At the National Institutes of Health, the days of living large seem to be over. Since fiscal 2003, when Congress finished its five-year effort to double the NIH budget, the medical research agency has been struggling to keep up with inflation and redirect its spending (see GSN, Aug. 6, 2004).

Now, facing a third year of losing ground to inflation, the biomedical researchers who depend on government funds are complaining that there isn’t enough money to go around. Conflicts are brewing that could pit new priorities such as finding vaccines to stop bird flu against long-standing efforts such as developing drugs to combat Alzheimer’s.

Much of NIH’s $28.6 billion budget flows to university researchers through the agency's 26 centers and institutes devoted to different specialties. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the NIH request would fund $27.8 billion in research and development. Traditionally, the research community's varied disease groups, such as the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, have presented a unified front in pressing for research dollars. That comity may erode as competition increases for slices of a budget pie that has stopped growing.

The signs of tension are sometimes subtle. The American Cancer Society raised eyebrows when it won an earmark in the Senate's budget resolution. At an April 6 hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, members supported greater overall spending on biomedical research. They then urged NIH Director Elias Zerhouni to focus more on specific problems, such as mental health, or on particular groups, such as women and racial minorities.

“If the knives are going to come out, now is when it will happen,” said Samuel Gandy, who chairs the scientific advisory panel of the Alzheimer’s Association. His group depends on the roughly $650 million spent annually by NIH on Alzheimer’s research. That amount, though, makes its cause an also-ran compared with the $4.8 billion devoted to cancer. But Gandy's association says it won’t try to snag other groups’ funding, because “we may need [support from] the dentists and cancer guys tomorrow.”

The disease groups won a round on March 16, when the Senate voted to add $7 billion to the budget for health, education, and labor programs, with several senators citing the need to help NIH. In the House, the budget was pulled from the floor partly because a group of moderate Republicans led by Representative Mike Castle (R-Del.) was pushing for a similar increase, while conservatives stood firm.

In the end, “the highest likelihood is that [NIH's budget] will be flat in real dollars,” said Representative Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), who sits on the Appropriations subcommittee. Other lawmakers said that Congress may find enough money to keep up with inflation, but not more. That’s still enough of a squeeze to send researchers tussling for dollars.

The Bush administration requested $28.6 billion for NIH, the same funding it received in fiscal 2006. That level would result in $1 billion of lost purchasing power when adjusted for inflation, according to Representative David Obey (D-Wis.), who is the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee. (Inflation in the medical field ran about 4.1 percent last year, compared with a 3.4 percent rise in consumer prices.) Advocates say that NIH's purchasing power has fallen by roughly 10 percent since 2003.

Obey argued that President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy should be traded for more NIH money. Obey estimates that the proposed budget would translate into 656 fewer research grants than in fiscal 2006, and 1,570 fewer than in 2004. It would cut funding for clinical trials by 8 percent over 2005 levels, he said, and for research on critical diseases such as diabetes, stroke, Parkinson’s, arthritis, and Alzheimer’s.

Other biomedical programs would fare no better. The $8.2 billion proposed for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention represents a cut of $179 million from the current year.

The biomedical research budget has grown much faster than other important areas, such as the funding for physical science and NASA, said Weldon, who has a large NASA facility in his district. Still, members of Congress are loath to directly reject the advocates' calls for greater funding. “I'll try for more than a flat budget,” Representative Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee told National Journal, while also cautioning that money is tight.

Internal budget changes within NIH are reducing the pot of money earmarked for specific diseases. The White House is backing Zerhouni's effort to promote collaborative research by taking roughly $332 million from the semi-independent NIH research centers and placing the money in the director’s “Roadmap for Biomedical Research.” Because of worries about natural and man-made plagues, the White House has been directing more funds to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. This year, it is seeking a 6.2 percent increase for the NIH's “biodefense research” program to bring its budget up to $1.9 billion.

To offset the squeeze this year, NIH headquarters directed its various centers to slice 2.35 percent from the funding allocated for a variety of multiyear grants. Some centers choose to impose deeper cuts in particular projects. For example, Gandy, the director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said that his multiyear grant to develop an anti-Alzheimer's drug was sliced by almost 20 percent.

The biomedical sector has turned to several coalition groups, such as Research!America, and professional groups, including the Association of American Universities and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, to seek budget increases. The coalitions include universities, disease groups, and industry executives. The sector’s lobbyists were able to more than double the research budget from $12 billion in 1996 to $28 billion in 2004.

But away from the cameras, the disease groups also compete against each other. They race to out-organize each other, to raise more money, and to attract more volunteers and revenue from pharmaceutical companies. They competitively lobby legislators, advertise, pitch their message to the media, and recruit the most-prestigious champions from Hollywood they can find. The American Heart Association is one of the leaders in this race; it argues that heart disease causes 40 percent of American deaths, but heart research gets only 7 percent of NIH's budget. A flat budget in fiscal 2007, said Robert Eckel, president of the AHA, would mean that funding for cardiovascular research, when adjusted for inflation, would be 15 percent less than that spent from 2003 to 2007.

The bigger groups, such as the American Cancer Society, are powerful enough to push the limits of collegiality. In the Senate budget debate, for example, the society helped win unanimous support for an amendment introduced by three senators that reserved an extra $390 million for cancer research. That boost is “a fair, rational, do-no-harm kind of growth,” said Wendy Selig, the society's vice president for legislative affairs. “There is a very, very good story to tell in cancer, and I'm not saying there are not good stories elsewhere ... [yet] the promise for the cure of cancer is enormous,” she said.

These groups, both large and small, worry that the draft NIH reforms being pushed by Zerhouni will drain more money from their priorities. In particular, the cancer society fears a proposal to reduce the autonomy of the National Cancer Institute. The institute's unique status allows its director to submit his own budget request, in consultation with cancer-related disease groups, to the Office of Management and Budget without going through the NIH director or the Health and Human Services secretary. Although the larger disease groups worry that a reform will cause some of their money to be shifted to small groups, the smaller groups fear they may lose their shirt in post-reform lobbying blitzes.

“None of the stakeholders want to change, although they agree they need to,” said House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), who is writing an NIH reform bill that would give the director clout to force more collaboration among the semi-independent research centers. “I'd love to give them a 10 percent increase, but there's no money, so we have to use existing funds better,” he said.

No government agency welcomes a flat budget, even when it is set at almost $30 billion. But because of the peculiar economics of the research sector, a flat budget at NIH causes intense pain to many researchers on several fronts:

—Grants are worth prestige — and more. Universities want grants, in part, to boost their status vis-a-vis their university rivals. The grants also allow researchers and universities to discover drug-related ideas that can be patented and then sold to biotech or pharmaceutical companies. In 2004, NIH distributed $14.7 billion to outside researchers, most of which was spent on drug development in universities. Surgery-related work at medical schools, which has less profit potential, got only $322 million.

—Researchers’ careers are at stake. If university researchers can’t get grants, they find it difficult to publish scientific papers or to win patents. In turn, they lose laboratory space to campus rivals. The “kiss of death,” said Gandy, comes when a university prods a researcher to do more teaching, thus reducing his or her ability to pursue grants and research. Many university researchers lack tenure, and serve as franchisees of their universities' brand — Harvard or Columbia, for example — and they keep those franchises only if they win grants.

—It's hard for scientists to switch specialties. If scientists change specialties to follow funding shifts, they may lose time getting up to speed, and they would start low on the totem pole because they're competing against established scientists.

One sign that the rat race has begun: Worried about losing their funding, researchers are submitting multiple requests, driving the total from 28,368 in 2001 to 43,069 in 2005. That reduces the percentage of grants that actually get funded, forcing down a widely tracked marker of NIH's largesse called “success rate” or “pay-out line.” When the rate falls, researchers get worried — and then submit even more backup requests.

“Depending on where we're going in the future, there's going to be an undoubling” of NIH’s funding, said Sue Nelson, vice president of federal advocacy at the American Heart Association and a former Democratic aide to the Senate Budget Committee. “It's like we made all this progress only to watch it erode before our eyes. This is not the time to be doing this, when we're facing the retirement of the Baby Boom Generation.”

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Intel Agencies Improve Coordination, Hayden Says

Coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies has improved somewhat since the advent of the Office of the National Intelligence Director last year, the office’s deputy chief said yesterday (see GSN, April 12).

Agencies are “taking a bit more direction,” said Gen. Michael Hayden, according to the Washington Post.

“I have confidence in this enterprise,” he said during a meeting between senior agency officials and reporters.

The agency is focused on coordination rather than issuing orders, Hayden said. He likened his job to that of a soccer coach on the sidelines, as opposed to a football quarterback directing action from within the game itself. One senior intelligence official responded later: “In children’s soccer, all the kids run to the ball, and that’s somewhat like what is still going on in the community.”

The intelligence office is expected to have 1,539 staffers next year, according to management director Patrick Kennedy. Personnel absorbed from other areas today make up two-thirds of the agency’s staff; it is limited to 500 new hires.

New cooperation is occurring on specific issues between analysts, intelligence collectors and experts working at different agencies, said Thomas Fingar, chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Addressing charges that Bush administration officials misused intelligence to make their case for the invasion of Iraq, Fingar said fact checking of speeches had been “ratcheted up.” The job of intelligence, however, does not include “throwing raspberries” following a public statement, he added.

President George W. Bush has signed the office’s National Intelligence Priorities Framework, a three-tiered list of 30 intelligence targets, officials said. Included on the list are terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, China, Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the Post reported (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, April 14).

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Arizona Officials Seek Payment for Terror Drill

Officials in Arizona are asking the federal government to pay all costs for a counterterrorism drill planned in Phoenix in October 2007, The Arizona Republic reported today (see GSN, April 11, 2005).

TOPOFF 2007 is to involve a mock chemical attack in Phoenix, along with simultaneous strikes in Portland, Ore., and Guam.

Overtime and other expenses for the exercise could cost Phoenix $5 million, according to Mayor Phil Gordon.

“If they want us to participate in the federal exercise, they need to pay for it,” Gordon said. “I just can't in good conscience take money out of our public safety budget to pay for a federal exercise that is planned in Washington, D.C. We're being asked to go to a party and then pay for it.”

“If Phoenix pulls out, the state would very likely pull out, as well,” said Jeanine L’Ecuyer, spokeswoman for Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano.

Federal homeland security money supplied to Arizona has dropped by nearly one-third since 2003, the Republic reported. Phoenix is also at risk of being dropped from a list of cities that receive larger portions of the funding.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Marc Short said that Phoenix is making an issue about cost because it was not included as a priority city for Urban Area Security Initiative funding. The program delivered $10 million to the city in fiscal 2005.

“Unfortunately, the citizens of Phoenix and the citizens of Arizona are being caught as pawns in a political game with UASI funding,” Short said.

TOPOFF exercises began in 2000. The 2005 drill in New Jersey and Connecticut used 22,000 participants over five days and cost $22 million.

“Each exercise has gotten larger. So it's fair to say this drill will include more participants and likely more cost, as well,” Short said.

Portland might cancel participation in the drill if it does not receive reimbursement for its costs from the state of Oregon, the Republic reported (Matthew Benson, The Arizona Republic, April 14).

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Man Convicted in Sarin, Explosives Plot

A 40-year-old Tennessee man could be sentenced to life in prison after being convicted yesterday of seeking sarin nerve agent and explosives to use against government buildings, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 12).

It took a federal jury just more than one hour to convict white supremacist Demetrius “Van” Crocker on five counts. Sentencing is scheduled for July 13.

In recorded conversations with an undercover FBI agent, Crocker used racial epithets and discussed his desire to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” in Washington, D.C., or use poison gas against black people, AP reported. Federal authorities charged he wanted to obtain sarin or C-4 explosives for an attack on a state or federal courthouse.

A job in an electroplating factory appeared to have given Crocker some knowledge of basic chemistry, according to AP.

“There is no doubt he had what he needed to cause all sorts of destruction in the United States,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Godwin.

“This was a politically motivated crime. Profit was not a factor,” he said (Associated Press, April 14).

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IAEA Chief Leaves Iran Without Deal on Nuclear Freeze

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei left Iran last night without persuading Tehran to stop uranium enrichment, the New York Times reported (see GSN, April 13).

Diplomats in Europe also said that Iran appears ready to double the size of its production facilities in the coming weeks.

ElBaradei met with Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Iranian Atomic Organization, and Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. According to a diplomat familiar with the meeting, ElBaradei told them, “you have achieved your goal, and this would be a good time to pause, and allow negotiations to restart.”

“There wasn't a rejection of this, or an embrace of this. They are very aware that he will be writing a report two weeks from now” to the U.N. Security Council, the diplomat added (Fathi/Sanger, New York Times, April 14).

ElBaradei said that Larijani had recommitted “to provide clarity to outstanding issues before I write my report to the (International Atomic Energy Agency) board by the end of this month.”

He said the time was “ripe” for a political solution to the crisis, the Associated Press reported. Larijani, however, reaffirmed Iran’s stance that it would not again halt enrichment of uranium. “Such proposals are not very important ones,” he told reporters while standing alongside ElBaradei.

ElBaradei said he is unsure as to the extent of the nuclear program, according to AP.

“We have not seen diversion of nuclear material for weapons purposes, but the picture is still hazy and not very clear,” he said.

He added that “lots of activities went unreported” over the last 20 years of Iran’s nuclear program (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press I/Houston Chronicle, April 14).

Intelligence agencies in the United States continue to believe that it would take Iran years to prepare sufficient amounts of enriched uranium for a bomb, USA Today reported today.

“Our timeline hasn't changed,” said Thomas Fingar, chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the No. 2 U.S. intelligence official, said “we believe that Iran is intent on developing a nuclear weapon.”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan added that President George W. Bush was skeptical about the situation being resolved peacefully “give the regime’s history.”

National Counterproliferation Center chief Kenneth Brill said that Iran’s claims must be separated from its actual capabilities.

“An announcement is one thing,” he said, referring to Iran’s stated plans to build 3,000 centrifuges as the first step in a 54,000-centrifuge cascade. 

“It will take several years to build that many centrifuges,” Brill said (John Diamond, USA Today, April 14).

Chinese, European Union, Russian and U.S. officials are expected to meet Tuesday in Moscow for further talks on the nuclear standoff, AP reported.

China announced that Cui Tiankai, assistant to Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, would visit Iran and Russia over the next four days. Russia and China have opposed U.S. efforts to impose sanctions against Tehran.

The U.S. Embassy in Russia said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns would be in Russia on Monday to meet with the Group of Eight political directors (Associated Press II/New York Times, April 14).

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday the United States “would look at the full range of options” at the Security Council’s disposal in deciding how to deal with Iran, the Associated Press reported.

There will “have to be some consequence” for Iran’s actions, she said after meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay.

“There is no doubt that Iran continues to defy the will of the international community despite the fact that the international community very clearly said stop,” Rice added (Katherine Shrader, Associated Press III/Ohmy News, April 14).

MacKay, for the first time, outlined Canada’s stance on how to deal with Iran, according to a report carried in the Ottawa Citizen.

“I believe Canada is in the position that we do support the international need to respond in one voice, the need to demonstrate to Iran that we very clearly want them to comply on pain of sanctions if sanctions are necessary,” he said.

However, sanctions should only follow a series of “progressive responses” in the next few months.

“I don't think we want to take any drastic steps that would destabilize the very volatile situation right now,” he said. “We do believe it is necessary to start weighing all of these options in very short order” (Peter Morton, Financial Post; Steven Edwards, CanWest News Service/Ottawa Citizen, April 14).

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Senator Says Safeguards Would Help India Deal Pass

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said yesterday that quick progress by India to place its civilian nuclear reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards would help speed passage of the U.S.-Indian nuclear technology sharing agreement in Congress, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, April 13).

“It will help enact it without amendment and more rapidly if India can negotiate safeguards with the International Atomic Energy Agency before the Senate acts on the agreement,” he said while visiting New Delhi.

The deal “has growing support as we consider it and I hope that it can pass this year,” he added.

Alexander said that if India could “show at least initial progress on the negotiations that have to do with the United States being able to be a commercial supplier,” it would speed the Senate’s consideration of the deal (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, April 13).

Meanwhile, declassified documents indicate that U.S. intelligence agencies failed to provide advance warning of India’s 1974 and 1998 nuclear weapons tests even though they had monitored the country’s efforts for decades, AFP reported.

The National Security Archive said the CIA and other intelligence services began tracking and analyzing India’s nuclear program in the 1950s and could have given “far more detailed assessments.”

The intelligence gathering “did not result in U.S. intelligence analysts warning U.S. officials of India's nuclear tests, carried out in May 1974 and May 1998,” the archive said.

A 1981 CIA paper called China, not Pakistan, the greatest long-term threat to India.

“This perception has propelled New Delhi to reject the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty and full-scope safeguards in order to retain the nuclear weapons option,” the document said (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, April 13).

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Russia Failing to Meet Nuclear Disarmament Obligations, U.S. State Department Official Says

A senior U.S. official said Russia has not met its obligations to cut the number of nonstrategic nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, MosNews reported yesterday (see GSN, April 12).

“We believe that Russia has not completely fulfilled the Russian side of the presidential nuclear initiative,” said Stephen Rademaker, acting assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation. Rademaker was referring to a 1991 U.S.-Russian initiative to reduce the number of tactical nuclear weapons.

He added that differences remained regarding access to Russian nuclear sites under the U.S.-financed effort to dismantle Soviet-era nuclear stockpiles, MosNews reported.

“One of the practical challenges in implementing these programs is to strike a balance between our need for accountability and Russia’s need to be satisfied that its national security is being protected,” he said (MosNews, April 13).

A Russian official yesterday rejected Rademaker’s statement on tactical nuclear weapons, Interfax reported.

“The U.S. and Soviet decisions to reduce tactical nuclear weapons were unilateral commitments initiated by the presidents. No documents to the effect were signed.  Russia has obviously met its commitments,” said Col. Gen. Yevgeny Masorin, former head of the Russian Defense Ministry agency in charge of nuclear security (Interfax, April 13).

Meanwhile, lead Russian ICBM designer Yury Solomonov yesterday said his country’s new Topol-M and Bulava missiles would provide a nuclear deterrent through 2040, The Moscow Times reported.

“I assure you that the number of active warheads the strategic nuclear forces will have in 2015 and even in 2020 will be no less than 2,000,” said Solomonov, head of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology.

Solomonov was responding to calls for a significant boost in production of single-warhead Topol-M missiles from roughly six annually to upward of 30, in order to offset decommissioning of multiwarhead missiles.

Russia this year is to announce plans to adapt the submarine-launched Bulava missile for land use, Solomonov said. The Bulava can carry six warheads.

The adaptation “could be put into reality in two to three years, given adequate financial support from the state,” said Vasily Lata, a defense analyst at the PIR Center (Nabi Abdullaev, The Moscow Times, April 14).

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Finance Issues Should Not Delay North Korean Nuclear Talks, Chinese Official Says

China yesterday said that financial issues between the United States and North Korea should not hold up six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, April 13).

“There are now financial issues between the United States and North Korea, and there hasn’t been a satisfactory resolution,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. “Denuclearization is more important than the financial issues.”

“We hope all sides will clear the obstacles and focus their efforts to discuss the most important peace issue in East Asia, that is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, April 13).

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OPCW Inspects Pueblo Chemical Depot

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons recently conducted a surprise inspection of the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, the Pueblo Chieftain reported yesterday (see GSN, March 29).

For the third straight year, monitoring agency for the Chemical Weapons Convention gave the facility high marks for safety, teamwork and weapons inventory accountability.

The inspections are annual, and the only notice is given by phone two to three days before inspectors arrive (John Norton, Pueblo Chieftain, April 13).

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Anniston Cited for Environmental Violations

The state of Alabama this week cited the U.S. Army’s Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility for several “minor” environmental violations, the facility said in a press release (see GSN, March 3).

Disposal site managers had “self reported” most of the problems to the Alabama Environmental Management Department, the release states. Violations included leaking hydraulic fuel inside the facility and a bag of secondary waste that was not disposed of within the required 72 hours.

Most of the cited problems were addressed before the facility received the letter yesterday.

“We work very closely with ADEM inspectors on site and with their managers in Montgomery. This is an example of one of those rare times when our own maintenance activities and house-cleaning efforts did not quite measure up to ADEM’s expectations,” government project manager Timothy Garrett said in the release (Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility release, April 13).

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