Print“When health research funding stays flat, medical progress stalls, our innovation economy is affected and American jobs are lost.”
The U.S. public and private sectors invested $140.5 billion in 2010 on research to find new ways to treat, cure, and prevent disease and disability, a 1 percent increase over 2009, according to a new report. The report from the education and advocacy group Research!America finds that the increase in spending failed to keep pace with the rising cost of conducting research, which grew 2.8 percent during the same period.
John Porter, former congressman and chair of Research!America calls the findings alarming. “When health research funding stays flat, medical progress stalls, our innovation economy is affected and American jobs are lost,” he says.
Industry led the way on research spending accounting for $76.5 billion in spending in 2010, a 2.9 percent increase. Pharmaceutical companies spent the most, investing $37.4 billion in research, a 14.6 percent increase. That more than offset an 8 percent drop in spending by the biotechnology industry, which dropped its R&D investment. Medical technology companies spending on research totaled $9.1 billion.
Federal funding of health research fell to $45.9 billion, a $550 million decrease from 2009. The National Institutes of Health represented the biggest source of funding for research on the federal side with a total of $34.8 billion.
Other institutions, including universities, state and local governments, philanthropies, independent research institutes, and voluntary health associations accounted for the balance of spending with a total of $18.1 billion in 2010, a 1.7 percent increase over the previous year.
Research!America called on President Obama to include sustained, strong investment in research as a core component of the jobs plan he is scheduled to introduce to Congress September 8.
“A nation receives great economic and health benefits from its investment in medical and health research,” says Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America. “Other nations have learned this lesson from the U.S. and are now outstripping us in the pace they are ramping up their investment.”
September 08, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-u_s_investment_in_health_research_remains_stagnant_.html
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