Translational Budgets
Posted by Jonathan Kahn, Biopolitical Times guest contributor February 18, 2011
Biopolitical Times
President Obama’s proposed budget for 2012 is out and it contains some interesting news about the federal government’s continuing role in genetic research and product development. While the overall funding allocated to the Department of Health and Human Services is slated for a 2% reduction – the first reduction in the Department’s 30-year history – President Obama has requested a 2.4% increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health. According to GenomeWeb, NIH director Francis Collins plans to use the funds to focus on “leveraging new genomics technologies in disease and health research and translational science, and in pursuing goals in personalized medicine.”
So far so good: More money for research is generally to be applauded. But drilling down a bit further into the proposed NIH budget raises some concerns. First, in contrast to a 2% increase in the budget for the National Human Genome Research Institute, President Obama has proposed a whopping 90% decrease in the budget of the Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Public Health Genomics.
I have my own issues with the concept of public health genomics and certain historical links to eugenic practices, but the OPHG conducts some very valuable population-based analyses of the role of genomics in improving the public’s health. For example, it recently funded the Michigan Department of Community Health to increase the number of health plans that have policies consistent with U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations for genetic risk assessment for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
Public health genomics, however, is not a money maker. The sort of research supported by the OPHG does not lead to new products that can be developed and marketed by large pharmaceutical corporations. Contrast this with a related NIH initiative announced last month to found (and fund) a new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
What are “translational sciences?” Apparently they involve “translating” federally funded research into corporate profits. According a story in the New York Times, the Center was conceived in part as a response to the fact that big pharmaceutical corporations are producing fewer and fewer new drugs and beginning to cut back on research as the cost of bringing new drugs to market becomes greater. The Center aims to address this situation by conducting much of the original hard work of identifying likely drug candidates and then doing “as much research as it needs to do so that it can attract drug company investment.”
This leaves us with another potential instance of “socialism for the corporations and capitalism for the rest of us.” Federal funding is being increased to support research that will “translate” most immediately into profits for corporations, while it is being slashed to programs such as the OPHG that aim to provide direct health benefits to the public without developing marketable commodities.
This is not a reason in itself to decry the increase in funding that supports such translational research, but it is important to look at such initiatives in context and to understand the broader framework within which they are occurring. The frame here seems to be one of dismantling some public resources while putting others in the service of corporate “partners.”
Jonathan Kahn, J.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Law at Hamline University School of Law. He is currently working on a book titled Race in a Bottle: Law, Commerce and the Rise of Ethnic Medicine (forthcoming, Harvard University Press).
So far so good: More money for research is generally to be applauded. But drilling down a bit further into the proposed NIH budget raises some concerns. First, in contrast to a 2% increase in the budget for the National Human Genome Research Institute, President Obama has proposed a whopping 90% decrease in the budget of the Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Public Health Genomics.
I have my own issues with the concept of public health genomics and certain historical links to eugenic practices, but the OPHG conducts some very valuable population-based analyses of the role of genomics in improving the public’s health. For example, it recently funded the Michigan Department of Community Health to increase the number of health plans that have policies consistent with U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations for genetic risk assessment for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
Public health genomics, however, is not a money maker. The sort of research supported by the OPHG does not lead to new products that can be developed and marketed by large pharmaceutical corporations. Contrast this with a related NIH initiative announced last month to found (and fund) a new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
What are “translational sciences?” Apparently they involve “translating” federally funded research into corporate profits. According a story in the New York Times, the Center was conceived in part as a response to the fact that big pharmaceutical corporations are producing fewer and fewer new drugs and beginning to cut back on research as the cost of bringing new drugs to market becomes greater. The Center aims to address this situation by conducting much of the original hard work of identifying likely drug candidates and then doing “as much research as it needs to do so that it can attract drug company investment.”
This leaves us with another potential instance of “socialism for the corporations and capitalism for the rest of us.” Federal funding is being increased to support research that will “translate” most immediately into profits for corporations, while it is being slashed to programs such as the OPHG that aim to provide direct health benefits to the public without developing marketable commodities.
This is not a reason in itself to decry the increase in funding that supports such translational research, but it is important to look at such initiatives in context and to understand the broader framework within which they are occurring. The frame here seems to be one of dismantling some public resources while putting others in the service of corporate “partners.”
Jonathan Kahn, J.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Law at Hamline University School of Law. He is currently working on a book titled Race in a Bottle: Law, Commerce and the Rise of Ethnic Medicine (forthcoming, Harvard University Press).