In This Issue
From Capitol Hill
Appropriations Set to Move Ahead in May
GINA Legislation Approved
From Research!America
Your Candidates-Your
Health Adds Congressional Elections
Presidential Candidates Invited to Debate Science,
Research
In the News
Regular Features
President's Message
Member Spotlight: Eli Lilly and Company
Appropriations Set to Move Ahead in May
As of press time, the House of Representatives and Senate continued work on a joint budget resolution. Because the April 15 deadline for final adoption of a budget resolution has come and gone, congressional leaders were considering a deeming resolution, an alternative method to set limits on the total levels of funding that could be appropriated in FY09. Should Congress adopt neither a budget resolution nor a deeming resolution by May 15, the House and Senate can begin to consider appropriations bills. This includes the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, which provides funding for the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Visit www.researchamerica.org advocacy for updates on funding for research to improve health in FY09.
GINA Legislation Approved
Congress finally adopted the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in April. GINA is designed to protect Americans from genetic discrimination by employers and insurers. The absence of uniform genetic privacy protection may discourage patients from being genetically tested and participating in clinical trials. Genetic nondiscrimination legislation was first introduced 13 years ago but has met many roadblocks along the way. The Senate approved GINA in the previous two sessions of Congress, but the House could not secure enough votes for passage. On April 25, 2007, the House passed GINA with strong bipartisan support, 420-3. After nearly a year of negotiation, the Senate approved GINA, 95-0, on April 24. Thank your members of Congress for passing GINA.
Your Candidates-Your Health Adds Congressional Elections
Races for the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are kicking off
as many states hold their congressional primaries now through September. As it
did for the presidential candidates, the Your Candidates-Your Health
initiative is now engaging congressional candidates
to go public with their views on health, science and research.
As of press time, seven congressional primaries have been held: Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico and Texas. The candidates in these states and territory who will be on the ballot in the general election in November were recently invited to participate in Your Candidates-Your Health 2008. All other congressional candidates will receive their invitations following the primary election in their states and territories.
Visit www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org to see lists of our partners and the invited candidates to date, and to urge the candidates to respond. By submitting responses, candidates can share their views on issues including the state of the health care system, electronic health records and federal funding for research at agencies including the NIH, CDC, AHRQ, FDA and the Veteran's Administration.
In addition to Your Candidates-Your Health, voters can find information on health, science, the candidates and the elections through a variety of Web-based efforts. The American Association for the Advancement of Science established Science and Technology in the 2008 Presidential Election (http://election2008.aaas.org ), and AARP launched its Divided We Fail campaign to ensure affordable, quality health care and long-term financial security for all Americans (www.aarp.org/issues/dividedwefail ). AAAS and AARP are Research!America members.
It is clear that the research and health communities are committed to making their issues a priority in the 2008 election and are providing voters with the resources to make informed decisions. Make sure that your candidates are sharing their views.
For supporting partner information, e-mail cmcconnell@researchamerica.org .
Presidential Candidates Invited to Debate Science, Research
Science Debate 2008 has again invited the presidential candidates to participate in a debate about science and technology policy, medicine and health. "Is America Losing its Competitive Edge? A Presidential Debate on the Role of Science in America's Future," is planned for Portland State University, on May 2, 9 or 16. It will be televised on PBS if at least one candidate agrees to appear. David Brancaccio, the host of NOW on PBS, will moderate the event with a panel of internationally recognized scientists selected by the organizers.
Science Debate 2008 is a grassroots imitative spearheaded by a growing number of scientists and concerned citizens, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Council on Competitiveness, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, Research!America and more than 150 other institutions and universities. More than 37,000 individuals have signed the call for the debate.
Help shape the debate by letting the candidates know you want them to participate in Science Debate 2008. Visit www.sciencedebate2008.com to sign on, view the invitation to candidates and learn more.
Media Matters
A Broken Research Pipeline?
Much local media attention has focused on the March 2008 report,
A Broken Pipeline:
Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk, released by Brown University, Duke University, Harvard
University, Ohio State University, Partners Healthcare, the University of California,
Los Angeles and Vanderbilt
University. It profiles a dozen
young researchers struggling to obtain research grants because of years of flat
budgets for the National
Institutes of Health. The Charlottesville Daily Progress
quotes Deborah
Lannigan, PhD, assistant professor of
microbiology, the University of
Virginia: "It took us a long
time to get funding... to resume our research to see if the plant compound SL0101
is a potential cure for breast cancer."
The Tennessean (Nashville) profiles two of the researchers featured in the report, Pampee Young, MD, PhD, assistant professor and director of transfusion medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and William Lawson, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt. Both have had to stall their research on repairing damaged hearts, blocking tumor growth and treating scarred lungs, because they cannot secure NIH grants.
Stacie Propst, PhD, vice president of science policy and outreach, Research!America, talked with reporter Thomas Day of Medill News Service in Chicago about the average age for scientists to receive their first NIH grants. She explained that it is rising as fewer proposals are funded. Therefore, "younger investigators have a tougher time breaking into the NIH grant system."
Mary Woolley, Research!America president, writes about the importance of developing the whole research pipeline in a column published on Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America's Innovation.org Web site. She says the U.S. must foster scientific innovation through a strong collaboration among academia, industry and government to maintain our economic competitiveness and standard of living. Woolley adds that the current downward spiral in federal research funding must be reversed to "ensure support for the entire collaborative research pipeline." PhRMA is a Research!America member.
The DNA Age
Amy Harmon, domestic correspondent, The New York
Times, received the 2008
Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for her ongoing series "The DNA Age."
The series explores the various impacts of genetic technology and new genetic
information on American life.
Small Business Research
Reporter Bob Grant wrote an entry in The Scientist blog announcing that the U.S. House Committee on Small Business is
starting the reauthorization process for the Small Business Innovation Research
program. This program awards research grants to start-ups with promising ideas
or technologies. Last year, the program awarded $2 billion dollars to small
businesses. The full House later passed the reauthorization bill (H.R. 5819),
which now moves to the Senate.
President's Message
Researchers are not happy. Not only are funding and policy progress
stalled, champions for research seem defeated. The presidential candidates to date
have declined participating in Science Debate 2008, and Congress has not acted
to better support research. Considering the dismal state of affairs, there is
shockingly little commitment to election-year advocacy for science by
scientists. Why aren't scientists angry and taking action? Chris Mooney
recently skewered the science community in The New Republic: "Science has probably never been more relevant
to policy-making. Which means that ... the science community's public reticence
can have dangerous results."
Much more active than the science community and with a history of significant impact, patient advocacy organizations are more politically engaged. It's time for patient advocacy groups, business and the science community to work together more closely. Together we can assure that all candidates are aware of the public's will (not researcher selfinterest) to make research a higher national priority.
This month we launch the 2008 Senate-House edition of YourCandidatesYourHealth.org, which we introduced with great impact in 2006 as the first-ever research stakeholder voter education initiative. If you aren't involved in this call to action- personally and organizationally-you have to consider whether you have standing to complain if the next Congress and president fail to make research for health a priority!
Member Spotlight: Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company is a leading, innovation-driven corporation committed to developing a growing portfolio of best-in-class and first-in-class pharmaceutical products that help people live longer, healthier and more active lives. Lilly's therapeutic areas of interest include mental illness, endocrinology (particularly diabetes and osteoporosis), oncology and cardiovascular disease.
Eli Lilly plays a leadership role in advancing medical
and health research, beginning with the medicines it develops.
"We are committed to researching, developing and marketing our products in an ethical and transparent manner, and we spend every day thinking about how we can bring the next generation of breakthrough medicines to patients around the world," said Alex M. Azar, II, senior vice president, Corporate Affairs and Communications at Lilly. Prior to joining Lilly, Azar was deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Lilly's mission is to find answers for some of the world's most urgent medical needs. Azar said the company's success is guided by targeting its therapies and treatments to "the right patient at the right dose at the right time."
While the company has extensive internal research efforts, it also embraces a philosophy of "research innovation without walls," which Azar said means "we pursue cutting-edge science and technology from external resources.
"As such, increased public and private investment in research contributes to our efforts to developing medicines that help people live longer, healthier and more productive lives."
Although no single message is targeted to any single audience, Lilly communicates with patients, payors and prescribers in varied ways.
"For patients, we focus on improving their health by doing all that we can to ensure that the health systems provide them access to our treatments," Azar said. "With payors, we continuously work to help them recognize the economic, clinical and quality of life values in our products.
"For prescribers, we do all that we can to make sure they are informed on how to appropriately use the technologies we develop."
Lilly spends nearly 20% of its annual sales on research and development.
"The work of the world's innovative biopharmaceutical companies, which invest more than $58 billion per year in R&D, is specific and resource-intensive," Azar said. "This work produces the life-saving and lifeenhancing treatments we all want for the future of our health."
Last year Lilly became the first pharmaceutical company to publicly disclose online details about its grants to U.S. nongovernmental organizations, research institutions and others.
Lilly has been a Research!America member since 1998. Gail H. Cassell, PhD, vice president, scientific affairs, and Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar for Infectious Disease, serves as a Research!America emeritus director.
"Our membership with Research!America has provided us an enormous value over the years," Azar said. "Our partnership has helped demonstrate our commitment to engage in the fundamental issues that impact positive patient outcomes."
For more, visit www.lilly.com.
Research!America members can download the entire May Research Advocate
using their member log in. E-mail kfuller@researchamerica.org if you need your log-in information.