Today the New York Times published an op-ed
by Newt Gingrich where he calls for doubling the budget for the National
Institutes of Health here in the US. Who can argue with that? Mr. Gingrich
correctly points out that the NIH budget has been flat for years and that this
has eroded the nation’s ability to carry out needed fundamental research. Of
course, this situation is nothing new for antibiotic researchers. Having lived through decades of essentially
no funding, there was relief starting in 2006 with at least some funding. I can’t put my hands on exact numbers, but I
know that through the Drug Discovery and Resistance study section, through
which many of the grants on antibiotics are funneled at NIH, and where I worked
as a reviewer for a number of years, the paylines were only rarely over
10%. Most of the time, we funded only
6-10% of grants submitted – because of a lack of money – not because we had no
good grants to fund.
Of course, the quality of grants was not always so good
either. But with years of penury behind us, how could we expect anything
else? With no funding, people leave the
field and no one enters the field. Those
that do may not be so well trained since they might have ended up in
antibiotics research as a sideline of their thesis supervisor, who most likely
knew little about the subject. Or, they may simply be scientists trained to do
basic research trying to do the more practical drug discovery research with no
particular training or background in this highly specialized field. This leads
us to a situation where we have a tiny amount of money going to a tiny number
of antibiotic researchers via the NIH.
And, to make things worse, in spite of many years of cajoling,
the NIH still does not recognize the need for specialized training in this
area. The NIH has yet to put in place a program that will train antibiotic
researchers in the areas of drug discovery and development within the pharmaceutical
industry – where the special knowledge still exists – at least for now.
What does Mr. Gingrich propose? He suggests a doubling of
the overall NIH budget and he dreams of a world where we could boost research
on Alzheimer’s, diabetes, kidney disease, cancer, strokes, and arthritis. All of these already receive more money from
NIH today than antibiotic resistance.
Yet according to the CDC,
antibiotic resistance causes two million infections in US hospitals every year
leading to 23,000 (a minimum estimate) deaths.
This adds up to $20 billion in excess health care expenses and costs an
additional $35 billion per year in lost productivity.
Another part of Mr. Gingrich’s proposal is that the NIH
director be given the freedom of how to spend the money. The problem is that, at least within the National
Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (one of the institutes of NIH)
where antibiotic research is funded, the director has deliberately chosen to
prioritize other areas of research over antibiotics for decades. Is this a good
idea?
So, like all of the presidential
hopefuls this year, Mr. Gingrich ignores antibiotic resistance and
antibiotic research and development in his appeal for more NIH money. On the other hand, it is remarkable that we
have this proposal before us from one of the leading conservative politicians
of our time. He actually wants to spend
more government money. Wow. I’m just sorry that, once again, antibiotics
are ignored.
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