NIH $1.6 Billion Funding Cut Threat & Vaccine Research

On March 1, 2013, automatic, across-the-board U.S. federal budget cuts known as sequestration are scheduled to take effect and the leading funder of biomedical research—the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—is one of the biggest targets. NIH is facing a 5.1 percent budget cut of $1.6 BILLION.

NIH officials are telling Congress and the media that the health of the nation is at stake if more than a billion dollars is cut from its budget. But it begs the bigger question: what does NIH fund and how is their taxpayer-funded research impacting the future of health care, especially when it comes to vaccine research and development? NIH officials are telling Congress and the media that the health of the nation is at stake if more than a billion dollars is cut from its budget. But it begs the bigger question: what does NIH fund and how is their taxpayer-funded research impacting the future of health care, especially when it comes to vaccine research and development?

NIH Money Created Lethal Bird Flu Virus

The avian flu debacle is a good example of why some people are questioning whether NIH dollars are always used wisely.

Last month, NIH-funded scientists, working separately in labs in the United States and Europe, declared they were ending a voluntary halt on their two different research projects—both equally controversial—that involved creation of an airborne transmissible form of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus. The scientists agreed to pause their work in December 2011 because of biosecurity and public health concerns raised when the scientists planned to publish research details in the medical literature.

Concern the Virus Could Escape the Labs

The research has raised alarm among U.S. bioterrorism agencies and other scientists because it has involved deliberately mutating H5N1 to make it more transmissible in ferrets and there is concern the virus could accidentally escape from the labs and potentially infect humans. Arguing that “the benefits outweigh the risks,” the lab scientists say that creating a mutated deadly and transmissable form of bird flu virus will help in the quick development of a vaccine if the virus naturally mutates on its own and infects humans in the future.

In the spring of 2012, both studies were published. However, the voluntary moratorium on further lab research on the mutated bird flu virus stayed in place until now. While other countries have granted permission for the studies to continue, U.S. federal agencies want to first put in place extra guidelines for government-funded higher-risk lab research like this.^[1][2] 

How Much NIH Money Was Spent?

At the center of the drama are Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Ron Fouchier, the lead scientists to the two separate studies. Fouchier will resume his bird flu work within a few weeks using European funding at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. However, Kawaoka, a professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, will have to wait until the new government guidelines are implemented.^[3]  

Fouchier received some NIH funding, while Yoshihiro’s H5N1 research is primarily funded by NIH. In 2006, Yoshihiro received a $506,275 grant through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease for the project titled “Pandemic Potential of H5N1 Influenza Viruses.” For the same project, he received $491,594 in 2007, $485,519 in 2008, nearly $1 million in 2009 and $480,844 in 2010, for a grand total of nearly $3 million.^[4] 

His work now waits in limbo to be continued in a $12.5 million, 2000-square foot Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin,^[5]which was especially built for Yoshihiro’s growing H5N1 research and funded by a partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. ^[6]   

NIH Claims Sequestration Threatens Jobs, Economic Growth

According to an analysis by United for Medical Research (UMR), which is a coalition of medical trade associations, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and universities receiving NIH and drug company grants, the $1.6 billion NIH cuts from the sequestration could trigger a elimination of 20,500 jobs and a $3 billion loss of economic activity. In a recent press release, UMR argued that NIH should not get any budget cuts because the agency “supports more than 402,000 jobs and $57.8 billion in economic output nationwide, in 2012 alone.”^[7] 

NIH director Dr. Francis Collins told The Associated Press that NIH cuts would delay the start of hundreds of medical research projects across all disease states.^[8] He said there could also be delays to existing grant-funded multi-year projects even though most of these award recipients have been funded at 90 percent of what was promised so far, but the budget sequester would likely tie up the rest of their funding.^[9]

NIH Grant Competition Fierce

Federal funding for NIH doubled from 1988 to 2003, but there has been growing competition for NIH grants fueled by an increasing number of scientists seeking government funding for their research. The success rate for winning a grant is at its lowest level in history.^[10] In the 2012 fiscal year, NIH awarded 13,989 grants totaling more than $5.5 billion for a grant application success award rate of 20.3 percent.^[11] 

Collins warned that one of the medical advances being threatened by sequestration is the development of a universal flu vaccine. At a February hearing on Capitol Hill, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Chief Scientist Dr. Jesse Goodman confirmed that a universal flu vaccine is still 5 years to 10 years away.^[12]  

NIH Grants Also Fund Vaccine Manufacturers

Overall, there are currently 4,595 completed, active or recruiting vaccine-related trials in the NIH database. Of these, 1,053 trials list NIH as a funding source, while 3,411 trials list NIH and/or industry.^[13]  

The expanding public-private partnership between NIH and pharmaceutical companies is accelerating the development of many new genetically engineered vaccines. Billions of dollars in NIH grants are being used to create vaccines using genetically modified animal and insect cells and novel adjuvants that will ramp up the human immune response.

For example, NIH awarded $1 billion in 2006 to six pharmaceutical companies to be used toward cell-based flu vaccine research.^[14]  In 2009, Protein Sciences received a Department of Health and Human Services contract for up to $147 million to advance their study on using genes to manufacture a flu vaccine.^[15]  That vaccine received approval in January.^[16]  

Alternatives to NIH Research Grants

With the ongoing national budget crisis and looming decrease in congressional NIH budget appropriations, efforts to reassess scientific research funding sources are underway even as medical trade groups, drug companies and universities oppose NIH funding cuts.^[17]   

There are a number of other options when it comes to paying for medical research. Some scientists have turned to a “crowdfunding” concept, where they raise funds from individuals to pay for scientific research.^[18]    

Others have moved away from depending on NIH grants and working under an open-ended funding model, like at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.^[19]  Additionally, the European Council just approved a larger research budget and expanded its framework to encourage more research cooperation with non-European Union parties.^[20]    

Should NIH Grant Focus Change?

There is a school of thought that NIH research dollars are not being used to fund some of the most important or necessary scientific initiatives, such as in the example of the H5N1 research. Dr. John Ioannidis, professor of medicine and director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center at Stanford University School of Medicine,^[21] along Joshua Nicholson from Virginia Tech, wrote a commentary in the Dec. 6 issue of Nature examining the efficiency of the NIH funding system.

The team found that since 2001, the majority of primary authors who produce the most leading-edge discoveries (based on their papers having received 1,000 citations or more) actually do not have funding from NIH. Instead, NIH typically funds conventional, incremental science. Further, those who influence the funding allocations are not among the high-impact scientists. In their commentary, Ioannidis and his colleague expressed concern that the NIH mission to fund “the best science, by the best scientists” is not being achieved and the allocation mechanism should be improved.^[22]   

“It is unknown whether other funding mechanisms are more efficient, they may even be worse,” Dr. Ioannidis stated in an interview with a reporter for the NVIC Newsletter, “If anything, I would argue that NIH should get a much larger budget, so that it can afford to venture more with high-risk innovative ideas and to support influential scientists from different disciplines and types of investigation.”^[23]

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4 Responses to "NIH $1.6 Billion Funding Cut Threat & Vaccine Research "

Mark Richards

Posted: 2/26/2013 4:10:19 PM

What I gather from this article is that the US government has managed to fund, at great expense, research into (essentially) a bio-weapon under a presumed umbrella of "public health". How typically ethical of them. I further learn that huge amounts of public cash flow to otherwise profit-making corporations to fund their vaccine research, all to bring even more mangling to our already trashed natural immunity and DNA. If the bio-weapons don't wipe us out, the cures will. Seems like there's some hope in "sequestration". Let's make it permanent!

Bioenergetic Randolph

Posted: 2/26/2013 7:39:18 PM

NIH funding of cruelty to animals in the "name of science" indicates that their funding should be cut off completely.

Silvermaven

Posted: 2/26/2013 8:34:43 PM

The NIH have not offered the people anything in the way of cures for over 35yrs. because they knew in 1985 what caused all of our illness. Now because they lied so long we have reports from Europe of Deer DNA in Beef and Misc. DNA in Beef in Africa. So its comes to no surprise when England reports an Est. 90,000 infected with gene sharing stealth when criminals gave it to us in vaccines in the first place. And the US military wonders why over 22 US soldiers a day kill themselves after giving the Anthrax too!!! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23434116 The only way we are going to win this war is expose the criminals for what they have done with our money all these yrs. instead of taking care of the people.

Gail Hurlbut

Posted: 3/5/2013 9:31:46 PM

I would like to see the profit numbers on these vacines being developed for what we all endured as non-threatening childhood illnesses. The side effects replicate the diseases without providing the true immunity of actually weathering the "disease." Besides profit for the pharmaceuticals... what's the benefit??? Now we're messing with genetically modified cells for which we have NO idea of the long term ramifications. It's very scary. Does anyone remember the medically created Spanish Influenza of WWI?