Posted on 03/01/2005 2:41:05 PM PST by neverdem
WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 - More than 700 scientists sent a petition on Monday to the director of the National Institutes of Health protesting what they said was the shift of tens of millions of dollars in federal research money since 2001 away from pathogens that cause major public health problems to obscure germs the government fears might be used in a bioterrorist attack.
The scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners and a biologist who is to receive the National Medal of Science from President Bush in March, say grants for research on the bacteria that cause anthrax and five other diseases that are rare or nonexistent in the United States have increased fifteenfold since 2001. Over the same period, grants to study bacteria not associated with bioterrorism, including those causing diseases like tuberculosis and syphilis, have decreased 27 percent, the petition said.
The letter, which has been circulated among scientists for several weeks, was sent on Monday to Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the director of the institutes, and was posted on the Web site of the magazine Science.
"The diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health importance to projects of high biodefense but low public-health importance represents a misdirection of N.I.H. priorities and a crisis for N.I.H.-supported microbiologist research," the letter said.
The letter was signed by 758 scientists who have received grants from the institutes or have served on panels helping to distribute them in the fields of bacteriology and mycology, the study of fungi.
Scientists specializing in viruses were not asked to sign because their grants are handled separately, but some virologists have expressed interest in organizing a similar petition, said Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who was the primary organizer of the petition.
"A majority of the nation's top microbiologists - the very group that the Bush administration is counting on to carry out its biodefense research agenda - dispute the premises and implementation of the biodefense spending," Dr. Ebright said in an interview.
Dr. Zerhouni declined through a spokesman to comment on the letter. But Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which controls about 95 percent of the institutes' biodefense research spending, said the petition's signers were mistaken on several points.
Dr. Fauci said the $1.5 billion a year the administration decided to spend on biodefense research starting in 2003 was new money and was not taken from existing N.I.H. programs. Moreover, he said, much of the biodefense research should also help protect against natural emerging disease threats.
For example, he said, research centers around the country that his institute has designated for biodefense financing will also work on the possibility of an influenza pandemic, which he acknowledged is a greater threat today than bioterrorism.
"The United States through its leaders made the decision that this money was going to be spent on biodefense," Dr. Fauci said. If the institutes had not taken the money, it would have been spent by the Defense Department or the Department of Homeland Security for similar purposes, but without the influence of scientists through the traditional grant-reviewing mechanism of the institutes, Dr. Fauci said.
But signers of the petition insisted that the government was making poor trade-offs. "These projects obviously take money away from basic research in the United States," said Sidney Altman, a molecular biologist at Yale who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989. He said that while a risk of bioterrorist attack existed, he considered it "a very minor factor" among all the threats faced by the nation. "There's no question that microbiology has suffered" by the focus on obscure organisms, Dr. Altman said.
The other Nobel laureate who signed is Arthur Kornberg, a biochemist at Stanford who won the medicine prize in 1959.
Charles Yanofsky, a biologist at Stanford set to receive the National Medal of Science on March 15, said in a statement that he had signed because he feared the current biodefense spending "will sacrifice progress by well-established investigators who are contributing to our overall understanding that is benefiting mankind in medical as well as many other areas."
Some scientists said they had signed because the institutes used a heavy hand in directing the money to six pathogens: those causing anthrax, tularemia, plague, glanders, melioidosis and brucellosis.
hrmn...
syphilis - entirely preventable STD
TB - largely a problem for the immunocompromised
something smells a little off here.
They will be the first people the NY Slimes marches out when something bad happens to buttress their point that the government did not spend enough money researching these types of things.
Sheesh.
758 scientists want more of the research money pie. It couldn't be simpler than that.
And they are too intellectually proud, or too focused, to follow the gravy train as it shifts.
There is some irony there...
And (dare I say it) the government is actually correct in this case:
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Especially when it comes to terrorism.
Cheers!
An asinine sentence, in my view.
One bioterror attack and whatever virus is used will have exceptionally "high public-health importance."
I'll betcha many of the scientists who've signed this letter are pissed that they aren't getting the research money they've concluded is necessary for their work which they believe is so critical that they've dedicated their lives to it.
That said, bless these scientists for spending so many years applying their intellectual gifts to benefit all of us. They are unsung heroes.
Sounds good to me!
......'PROTECTION' is a good word,.......like the word 'SAFE'...
(All Around Protection!)
You 'bet' ($$$$$) your 'life'......
Thank you, PRESIDENT BUSH...
When I was growing up in South Louisiana, I can remember the line for lunch in the school cafeteria. There was a trough style wash fountain with soap that we would wash our face and hands with before lunch. I rarely remember getting sick. Now, no one washes before meals, at school or otherwise. Touching doorknobs, etc after others, wouldn't get you sick, unless the germ entered a mucus membrane, (eye, nose, mouth). Washing before meals would cut out a lot of sicknesses.
THese guys are simply trying to protect the efficacy of the bioterror weapons presently in the terrorists' arsenals.
If this follows the typical pattern, many (most?) of the "758 scientists" won't be scientists at all, but rather non-scientists whose names are thrown in to make the list bigger.
By their own admission.
PIngarooo...
Mmmm...old friend in R & D was going to be at NIH on Monday.
Mmmm...old friend in R & D was going to be at NIH on Monday.
Any possibility your old friend is one of 758? Sometimes being a squeaky wheel has the opposite effect of what was intended. The bureaucrats remember the "troublemakers". It is ultimately the bureaucrats that dole out the $$$.
I wonder what the chances of that story making it into the Times.
That should read "US officials" Of course I didn't read the article with 100% attentiion. Much like the rest of my life - go figure.
Ah! More "consensus" science.
I'm wondering if he was lobbying against them...it was grant related in a big way but this was someone high up in the private industry sector, no ivory tower type.
I watched a documentary after 911 when they went into the history of bio weopons. We stopped researching after DOD concluded we were just pioneering low-cost WMD. Better with nukes that are expensive and tough to make.
Now the genie is out of the bottle we have to research bio-weapons. Nobody but a fool would REALLY not pursue defensive measures for bio-weapons.
I agree...it will be "put up or shut up" for good!
I saw that Lab the goverenment built on a base. It looked just like a regular house. Just filled with all this equipment to make this stuff. All bought by the feds out on the regular market. what you would need for a small-scale pharmceutical production process.
I don't how likely this is. But researching potential bugs seem prudent and cheap. I would want to fund research into NEW stuff. More crap to worry about later.
I don't think this really is an issue though. I bet most folks support this research. Just the loonies on the fringes won't.
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