Slashing research money won't help, may hurt.

Times are tough ... belts must be tightened ... everyone should sacrifice. These are the messages Congress conveys as it debates the next year's federal budget. But indiscriminate across-the-board cuts harm areas that promote the general welfare and help stimulate the nation's economy.

Biomedical research is one such area. Our nation's strong commitment to the National Institutes of Health and our system of funding has been the envy of other nations. Grants awarded by the NIH fulfill two extraordinarily important needs. They allow scientists to independently explore bold, creative ideas about health and disease and--perhaps just as important--nurture the next generation of researchers. Stipends and salaries bring young scientists into the lab who might not otherwise find their way. They become the teachers and investigators of the future or the pharmaceutical and biotechnology researchers who bring new medicines to patients.

The NIH granting mechanism creates an entrepreneurial environment, in which investigators bring their hypotheses to the marketplace of ideas. Proposed research projects compete head to head and only the most worthy rise to the top. Indeed, many worthwhile projects are not funded, even in the best of times.

In tight times, though, more and more important proposals go begging. The natural result is a dramatic decrease in the number of submitted proposals, a decreased willingness to propose or fund high-risk/high-payoff projects, frustration on the part of scientific reviewers, and discouragement on the part of investigators--particularly young ones.

This was the pattern in the mid-1990s, before Congress realized the damage being done and compensated by nearly doubling the NIH budget over a 5-year period. That move paid off--a 2006 study concluded that federal investment in the research program at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke earned a 4,600% return over 10 years (Lancet 2006;367:1319-27).

Now, however, the damaging pattern of arbitrary cuts is being repeated. NIH appropriations can't even keep pace with the 3.5% inflation rate for biomedical research costs. President Bush's proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 calls for flat-funding NIH--a substantial cut in inflation-adjusted dollars and another huge step toward reversing earlier gains.

The effects of these cuts are very real. In my own laboratory at Harvard, our work on the molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease and strategies to intervene therapeutically has already been hampered. The National Institute of Aging slashed all grant budgets by 18%, giving us 18% less money to carry out one of our critical projects aimed at understanding the biology of gamma-secretase, an enzyme involved in the production of neurotoxic amyloid-[[beta].sub.42] peptide found the cerebral plaques of Alzheimer's and an important therapeutic target. Other NIH grants of ours have taken comparable hits, and our lab is not alone: Many other biomedical research investigators face a similar plight. These setbacks have undoubtedly slowed the pace of essential research and ultimately will delay the availability of treatments and cures for devastating diseases. Truly, millions of lives are at stake.

But even from a strictly economic view, strong support for the NIH is in the nation's best interest. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies take their cues from discoveries that are reported openly by federally funded researchers. Although these companies can't afford to carry out long-term basic research, they ultimately reap great profits from the research carried out in academic labs. And start-up companies often spring from academic discoveries. Slowing the pace of basic biomedical research translates into fewer start-ups, fewer jobs, and a weaker economy.

In the long run, pharmaceutical and biotech companies enjoy the biggest financial gain from NIH research monies. Given this situation, it seems appropriate for these companies to reinvest a portion of their profits directly into NIH-funded research. I say reinvest because, ultimately, the industry as a whole prospers when academic labs can continue their work. Culling a very small portion of their enormous profits would not harm those industries but would make a tremendous difference in supporting the basic research that enables them to bring life-saving medicines to market.

Perhaps time is too short to implement these solutions for next year's budget. In the meantime, nickel-and-diming the NIH will not help solve the federal deficit. In the interest of saving federal dollars today, we ultimately lose the larger return on the tomorrow's investment. The proposed flat funding--actually a substantial cut--truly will be disastrous. Even a 3.5% funding increase, while an improvement over flat funding, would only allow researchers to keep up with inflation.

To ensure that progress moves at a reasonable speed, predictable, sustainable increases above the rate cost of biomedical inflation are needed. Is there the political will to accomplish this in the current fiscal climate? Let's hope so: Times are indeed tough--so tough that we simply cannot afford to shortchange basic biomedical research.

BY MICHAEL S. WOLFE, PH.D.

DR. WOLFE is professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a senior investigator in the center for neurologic diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital, both in Boston. He is also a member of the Coalition for the Life Sciences, which advocates for biomedical research and is based in Washington.