NIH Funded Research is One Public Investment that Yields Enormous Returns

As a researcher who has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over 20 years I am keenly aware of the largely prudent and accountable ways in which grant monies are spent by academic researchers. Dollar for dollar, the biomedical research enterprise may be one of the most cost effective of federally subsidized programs. I see first hand the enormous returns being paid on the taxpayer investment in biomedical research in the form of advancements in our understanding of disease mechanisms and new therapeutic approaches. In addition, federally funding of biomedical research directly and substantially benefits the American biotechnology industry. The days of biologists making their own reagents and gizmos to conduct experiments are long gone. Researchers now depend on a huge array of commercially available reagents, chemicals, consumables, kits and advanced instrumentation to conduct their investigations. Furthermore, a rising trend is to contract companies to provide highly specialized research services. In effect, this means that a large, and growing fraction of federal grant dollars are being funneled to U.S. companies that produce these goods and services. Therefore, an argument can be made that augmenting the NIH budget will stimulate the American biotechnology industry. I believe that this is indeed true and is only one of the reasons why I advocate doubling the NIH budget.