While President Barack Obama announced his support for precision medicine, it may not be enough to make up for years of medical research budget cuts, according to Laurie H. Glimcher, MD, dean of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and provost for medical affairs at Cornell University.
In a written response to President Obama's State of the Union address, published in The Washington Post, Dr. Glimcher said, "Universities are the nation's biomedical research powerhouses. But for the past decade they have been in a fiscal vise that has cinched tighter with every passing year. As the dean of a medical school with a strong focus on research, I have experienced firsthand how harmful these cuts can be, especially when young scientists are forced out of the field and no longer driving our country's spirit of innovation."
Federal funding for biomedical research has been cut 25 percent over the last 10 years, she said, and grants are not enough to cover the increasing cost of research. This is causing some scientists to leave research and many universities to pick up the slack, increasing university funding from 8.7 percent in 1962 to 19.4 percent in 2012, she said, citing data from the National Science Foundation.
Many institutions have been lucky enough to receive donations from private donors. The Weill Cornell Medical College, for example, was given a $100 million gift from Joan and Sandy Weill in 1998 and was given another $25 million from Gale and Ira Drukier in December 2014.
"President Obama could have been talking about donors like the Drukiers in his address to Congress when he praised 'the good, and optimistic, and big-hearted generosity of the American people who, every day, live the idea that we are our brother's keeper, and our sister's keeper,'" Dr. Glimcher wrote. "These generous keepers deserve his praise, but it's time the federal government joined them in fully funding the discoveries that will benefit all Americans."
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