Federal budget cuts funds for scientific research
By molly montgomery
April 19, 2011 12:17 a.m.
Already declining funding from the National Institutes of Health and other research agencies was sliced further in the budget President Barack Obama signed Friday.
The budget, which will support the government through the rest of the 2011 fiscal year, cut funding from the NIH by $260 million, said University of California spokesman Christopher Harrington.
This makes up a very small percentage of NIH’s total spending. However, 41 percent of UCLA’s research grants came from the NIH in 2010.
The cut follows a recent trend of decreased or constant NIH funding while inflation has been rising. This shrinks the amount of funds available for grants, said Dr. Leonard Rome, senior associate dean for research at the David Geffen School of Medicine.
“It is harder than ever in the history of the NIH to get a grant,” Rome said.
He added that less than 10 percent of researchers who apply for the NIH’s main grant receive it.
Since it is so difficult to get NIH funding, UCLA faculty must seek grants from other sources such as private foundations or other governmental agencies.
Rita Cantor, a human genetics professor, said everyone who submits grant proposals to the NIH, including herself, is concerned by the difficulty of obtaining research funding.
Since there is less money available every year, very worthy research is less likely to get funded, she said.
“(UCLA faculty) are doing the same job as they’ve always done, but they’re not being rewarded for it,” Cantor said.
While this policy may help reduce the current national deficit, Rome said he does not believe it will be good for the country in the long term because the U.S. will be outpaced by other countries that are investing more into medical research, such as China and Singapore, he said.
The budget also reduced funding to other federal agencies important to UC research, including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and NASA, Harrington said.
The UC will advocate increasing federal funding for research to Congress and the Obama administration for next year’s budget, he said.
As of right now, it is unclear how these cuts will be implemented or how exactly they will affect funding of grants at UCs for the rest of the year, Harrington said.
