In recent months, the financing of biomedical research of the National Institutes of Health has been canceled, delayed and plunged into uncertainty. According to an April Stat news analysisNIH funding has decreased at least $ 2.3 billion since the start of the year. Kff Health News Reports Complete or partial termination of approximately 780 NIH subsidies between February 28 and March 28 only. Additional NIH financing cuts to weave on the horizon, including Discounts offered at indirect costs.
In the midst of this volatility, one thing remains clear: the financing of NIH grants is a precious and proven, economically and in terms of improvement in human health.
A recent United for Medical Research report Shows that during the year 2024, the research funded by the NIH generated $ 94.58 billion in economic activity nationwide, a return on investment of 156%. In addition, the report shows that the financing of the NIH supported 407,782 jobs on a national scale. According to the NIH's own figuresPatents derived from the work which he financed produces 20% of economic value more than the other American patents.
These economic yields – including a return on investment which would empty any startup or investor in equity – cannot start to grasp the impact on individuals, families and communities in terms of increased longevity and higher quality of life.
If it is difficult to precisely quantify human health improvements resulting from research funded by NIH, there are proxy measures. As an example, a Study published in Jama Health Forum noted that the financing of the NIH supported the development of 386 of the 387 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019. Many approved drugs respond to the most pressing human health problems of our time, in particular cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases and neurological disorders such as Parkinson disease.
Many other progress funded by NIH represents what is now considered to be a public notoriety, such as the relationship between cholesterol and cardiovascular health, or standard practice, such as detection of newborns for serious illnesses that can be treatable with early medical intervention. But each of these fundamental aspects of contemporary medicine had to be discovered, tested and proven. They represent what NIH financing can do – and the type of progress in medicine that changes paradigm which are now very at risk.
Consider the biotechnology industry as such a paradigm change. In the 1970s, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to clone DNA and transplantation genes from one organism living to another. This work launched the biotechnology industry.
Two decades later, the NIH and the Department of Energy began an effort of 13 years to sequence the human genome, including through university research grants. In 2003, the researchers' consortium produced a sequence 92% accounting human genome. In 2022, a group of researchers mainly funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute of NIH produces a complete sequence of the human genome. This work has paved the way for information on hereditary diseases, pharmacogenomics (how genetics affect the body's response to drugs) and precision medicine.
NIH financing has also led to major breakthroughs in cancer treatments. In 1948, Sidney Farber demonstrated the first use of chemotherapy medicationAminopterine, to induce remission in children with acute leukemia. Before the search for Farber, who was Partly funded by the NIHChildren with acute leukemia were It is unlikely that he will survive even five years.
During the years that followed, other methods of treatment of cancer such as immunotherapy emerged, first as new areas of survey, followed by the development of drugs and clinical trials. NIH financing argued, among other things, the development of Car cell therapy twhich genetically modifies the T patients of patients fight against cancer. T lymphocyte therapy has improved results for many patients with persistent blood cancersAnd clinical trials are underway to discover other cancers that could be treatable with therapies by T lymphocytes.
For decades, scientists knew that breast cancer could play in families and hypothesize a genetic role. In the 1990s, teams of scientists – supported at least in part by the financing of NIH – found the BRCA1 And BRCA2 Genes responsible for hereditary predispositions within and other cancers. Today, many people are subject to BRCA gene mutations to make informed decisions on prevention, screening and treatment.
These types of progress, as well as improvements in detection and screening, have a significantly reduction of mortality rate. After reaching a peak linked to smoking in 1991, American mortality rates of all cancers dropped by 34% in 2022According to the American Cancer Society. For children with acute leukemia, who actually had no long -term survival chance 75 years ago, the figures are even more dramatic. THE Five -year survival rate is now around 90% for children with acute lymphocyte leukemia and between 65% and 70% for people with acute myelogen leukemia.
These examples represent a fraction of enormous progress that has occurred through decades of aggravating knowledge and research. NIH funding discounts are now threatening similar breakthroughs, which are prerequisite for better care, better technology and better results in health problems and the most common diseases of our time.
It is not research alone which is threatened by the financing cuts of the NIH. Researchers are also faced with new uncertainty. We have heard anxiety in the first hand concerning the construction of a research career in the current environment. Many young doctors-scientists wonder if it will be financially viable to build their own laboratory in the United States or find jobs in research establishments that must tighten their belts. Many residents of medicine, scholarship holders and junior teachers plan to leave the United States to train and build careers elsewhere. Losing researchers at the start of their career in other areas or countries would be a talented for biomedical research institutions nationwide and weaken the country's ability to compete worldwide in the biomedical sector.
The effects of a decrease in NIH financing may not be immediately visible for most Americans, but as cancellations and subsidy delays are rising, there will be a price. NIH financing produces incredible results. The cuts will make it possible to put in place scientific research and will lead to loss of quality of life and longevity for the generations of Americans in the years to come.
Euan Ashley is president of the Department of Medicine at the University of Stanford and professor of medicine and genetics. He is the author of “The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the incredible quest to solve them”. Rachel Keranen is a writer of the Stanford Department of Medicine.
