Testifying Before House Subcommittee
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
On May 11, I was pleased to appear before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to discuss NIH’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2023. Joining me (left to right) were leaders of several NIH institutes: Nora Volkow, National Institute on Drug Abuse; Tony Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Diana Bianchi, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Doug Lowy, National Cancer Institute; and Gary Gibbons, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Director Lawrence Tabak,
Thank you for speaking truth to power. Great pictures too.
Budgets matter. It is interesting that a lot of PhD training funds comes indirectly from the NIH and their grants. It is perhaps salient to highlight how much of these training funds are from NIH coffers compared to private institutions and foundations such as Howard Hughes, March of Dimes, Gates Foundation and the likes. Would love to see some charts and figures on that in terms of Biomedical Research training funds. In the UK, it would seem a lot of PhD fellowships are funded by companies such as GSK etc (as well as Wellcome Trust). As some large public universities have shown, intellectual property from such research provide a tale worthy of which get licensed and which do not. As venture capitalists act as gate-keepers, that is likely dictated by the “unseen” limited partners that do the funding. Globally, it would still seem that the US subsidizes biomedical research for large swaths of the globe. So perhaps there is something for consideration when it comes to funding from public companies beholden to shareholders?
BTW, nice to see two women on the panel, but given that most Biological Sciences PhD programs have 50/50 enrollment, shouldn’t the toipic of why attrition happens through the ranks also be addressed? Would be a shame to be labelled as an “Old Boys Club”.