Appropriations Bills

WASHINGTON – Today Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), testified before the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee on the president’s FY 2007 NIH budget request. NIH, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.

Total funding for NIH was cut last year and is frozen in the President’s budget request. When adjusted for inflation, the freeze results in one billion dollars of lost purchasing power from FY 2006 to FY 2007.

Within that request are cuts to research that could find ways to prevent, treat and cure diseases:

• More than half of the NIH budget is devoted to Research Project Grants. Bush’s cuts would result in 656 fewer research grants in FY 2007 than were given in FY 2006 and 1570 fewer than FY 2004. That means fewer opportunities for scientists to come up with the next lifesaving breakthrough.



• The President’s budget would cut funding for clinical trials for new treatments by eight percent since FY 2005 after adjusting for inflation.



• The budget cuts funding for research of critical diseases and topics including Diabetes, Stroke, Parkinson, Arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and Women’s Health.



• Funding for the National Cancer Institute at NIH would be $645 million less than FY 2003, and $213 million less than last year, after adjusting for inflation. That includes research into breast cancer, cervical cancer, brain cancer, colorectal cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, and uterine cancer. These funding cuts come on top of cuts to programs at the Centers for Disease Control for programs such as early cancer screenings, and prevention activities. According to the American Cancer Society, nearly 1,500 Americans die of cancer every day.

View the NIH estimates on program cuts at: http://www.nih.gov/news/funding.pdf.

# # #