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Globe: Impending Federal Cuts Would Hurt Boston Researchers


The headline sounds a little Halloweeny — "Threat to funds haunts Boston-area labs" — but there's nothing festive about the frightening prospect described in today's Globe story. Reporter Rob Weisman writes:

Boston-area teaching hospitals and universities are bracing for deep cuts in the federal funding that has fueled biomedical research for decades, raising fears that breakthrough work on cancer cures, stem cells, gene therapy, and other research will suffer setbacks.

Unless Congress agrees by Dec. 31 on $1.2 trillion in savings to reduce the federal deficit, National Institutes of Health spending will be trimmed by 8.2 percent, or about $2.5 billion annually, according to the Office of Management and Budget projections — part of an across-the-board budget-chopping process known as sequestration.

If that happens, hundreds of jobs and scores of grant proposals at Massachusetts labs could be lost. Some labs are already reassessing staff levels, and scientists worry they might not be able to proceed with crucial studies of serious diseases such as lung cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Frankly, I've never been able to get over my bafflement at the hand-to-mouth nature of jobs in science — the fact that the dependence on grants means that even some of our most brilliant scientists are often left wondering whether they'll still be able to work on their promising projects in a year or two.

And though the NIH budget has technically been flat for the last few years, I've already been hearing quite a bit about ever-harder-to-get grants and the damage to delicate laboratory social ecosystems that build up over many years — and can be destroyed with a single committee's "no."

Massachusetts, as Rob points out, gets more NIH money per capita than any other state, and stands to lose between $200 and $300 million next year. I imagine office windows going dark from Kendall Square to the Longwood Medical Area. Or am I over-reacting to the usual anti-cut lobbying? Readers, thoughts?

This program aired on October 3, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

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Carey Goldberg Editor, CommonHealth
Carey Goldberg is the editor of WBUR's CommonHealth section.

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