Highlights
- The Senate would add $373 million to the FY 2005 request and House appropriation
for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a total NIH budget
of $29.1 billion, a 3.9 percent or $1.1 billion increase (see Table
1).
- The Senate would allow most NIH institutes to receive increases between
3.4 percent and 4.6 percent, a percentage point more than the requested
and House increases for the institutes.
- NIH research (basic and applied) would increase 3.3 percent to $27.9
billion, far below the growth rates of the past six years.
- The additional Senate funds would fall short of the amounts necessary
to change NIH estimates that the total number of NIH Research Project
Grants (RPGs) would barely increase next year by 1.4 percent; the
number of new grants would rise slightly, but only back to last year’s
level after falling this year. The RPG proposal success rate would fall
to 27 percent in 2004 and stay there in 2005, down from 30 percent last
year. The additional Senate funds could, however, let the average grant
size rise 2 percent, above the 1 percent allowed for in the request
and House appropriation but still below the 3.5 percent expected inflation
rate for biomedical research.
- The Senate report
accompanying the bill does not contain language found in the House version
of the bill urging NIH to make scientific journal articles resulting
from NIH-funded research publicly available. In response to the House,
NIH has begun to formulate a new policy for public access to journal
articles.
- R&D in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would
rise 4.4 percent to $29.7 billion. Both the House and the Senate would
boost R&D substantially in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
and the Office of the HHS Secretary for biodefense
(see Table 2).
NIH R&D in FY 2005 Senate Appropriations
On September
15, the Senate Appropriations Committee released its version of the
Labor-HHS appropriations bill (S 2810) that would give $29.1 billion
to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in FY 2005. Earlier, on September
9, the House approved its version of the bill providing $28.8 billion,
exactly matching NIH’s request. The Senate bill would add $373 million to the
House and the request, allowing NIH to receive a $1.1 billion or 3.9
percent increase over this year’s budget (see Table
1). NIH classifies 97 percent of its budget as R&D, including
R&D facilities (the remainder is for overhead costs and research
training). The Senate plan would provide $28.3 billion for NIH R&D,
also a 3.9 percent increase over this year. (For details of the NIH
request, see Chapter 8 of AAAS
Report XXIX: R&D FY 2005 or the February
20 AAAS R&D Funding Update. For details of the House appropriation,
see the July 28 AAAS R&D Funding Update).
NIH and the NIH
community are adjusting to diminished expectations after years of favored
treatment. After a completed five-year doubling campaign involving 15
percent increases for each of the five years between 1998 and 2003 (see
Figure 1), biomedical researchers hoped for a ‘soft landing’ in following
years, or a gradual easing into slower growth rates. Instead, growth
has slowed dramatically. NIH enjoyed steady budget growth over the past
several decades, as shown in Figure 1, but growth accelerated sharply
after FY 1998 and continued to FY 2003 during the five-year NIH doubling
campaign. But then growth slowed down to just ahead of the inflation
rate in FY 2004, and would slow down some more in FY 2005 in the NIH
request and the House plan. Even the Senate increase would fall short
of recent increases.
Figure 1. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
Most NIH institutes would receive increases in a range between 3.4 and
4.6 percent within the tight overall funding environment (see Table 1).
There would be no clear favorites, unlike the past two years when biodefense research, mostly in the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was heavily favored. While the House
exactly matched the request, the Senate would add $373 million to the request,
giving most institutes an additional 1 percentage point increase over the
request.
The majority
of NIH’s budget is distributed to external performers through
Research Project Grants (RPGs), which are
investigator initiated, peer reviewed, and competitively awarded (see
Figure 2). The
House appropriation and the request would allow RPG funding to increase
by 2.7 percent in FY 2005 to reach $14.9 billion. These funds would
support a record 37,744 RPGs, an increase
of 515 awards over FY 2004 (up 1.4 percent; see Figure 2). Because RPGs
are multi-year grants, the number of new grants initiated in FY 2005
would be far smaller. In FY 2005, the number of new grants would rise
slightly to 10,393, but only back to the FY 2003 level after falling
this year. The Senate appropriation would not alter these estimates
significantly.
The success rate for new grant applications would dip to 27 percent
in FY 2004 and would stay there in FY 2005, down from a high of 32 percent
in FY 2001 (see Figure 2) and the lowest since FY 1995 because of recent
surges in the number of applications outpacing the number of grants
awarded. Although the number of RPGs has increased
from 25,000 in the early ‘90s to more than 35,000 (see Figure 2), the
number of grant applications has increased so fast that the success
rate is now well below the success rates of the NIH doubling period
1998-2003 when they exceeded 30 percent.
The House and Senate plans would result in nearly every institute funding
a smaller percentage of proposals in FY 2005 than in the past, despite
the recent doubling of the NIH budget. Expected success rates vary
by institute, each of which conducts its own grant solicitation process,
from a low of 15 percent (NIBIB) to a not-so-high rate of 33 percent
(NHLBI and NIDDK). Among the largest institutes, the National Cancer
Institute (NCI) expects a success rate of just one in four applications
(24 percent), down steadily from 33 percent in 1998 before the doubling
campaign. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)’s 33
percent success rate may be high among the institutes in FY 2005, but
would be down from 36 percent three years ago. Even the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose budget has grown the
most dramatically recently, has seen the pool of applications grow even
faster so that its 27 percent expected success rate in FY 2005 would
represent a steady downward trend from 43 percent in 1997, again before
the NIH doubling campaign. In
fact, every NIH institute (except NIEHS) would have a lower success
rate in FY 2005 than in at least one of the years just before the NIH
doubling campaign.
Figure 2. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
Even for successful applicants,
there would be some disappointments in the budget. The 1.3 percent average increase for all grants between FY 2004 and FY
2005 would just match the expected rate of inflation for the economy as a whole
(see Figure 2), but would fall behind the NIH-calculated Biomedical
Research and Development Price Index (BRDPI) that attempts to calculate the
inflation rate for goods and services purchased by the NIH budget. Recently,
NIH calculated the BRDPI increase for FY 2005 to be 3.5 percent. In recent
years, the BRDPI inflation rate has outpaced the economy-wide inflation rate by
more than 2 percent a year. (AAAS, and the federal government, uses the economy-wide
GDP deflator to adjust R&D dollars for inflation.) The Senate would
allocate most of the funds on top of the request to increasing the grants
inflation adjustment, but the Senate bill would only raise the average grant
increase to 2 percent, still well short of the expected inflation rate.
The Senate would sharply increase NIH funding for R&D facilities and
capital equipment in FY 2005 to $392 million, up 74 percent from this
year but still a sharp drop from $1.1 billion last year. Much of
this funding comes from the Buildings and Facilities account, which
would rise to $115 million in FY 2005; in 2003, this account was $639
million because of a major investment in biodefense
facilities construction. The B&F appropriation funds intramural
construction at NIH facilities, while in the NIAID budget there would
be $150 million for extramural construction grants to build an additional
20 extramural biosafety (level 3) laboratories
around the nation. The House would go along with this proposal, and
in July President Bush signed into law the Project Bioshield
Act (Public Law 108-276) that increases the federal share of these NIAID-funded
projects to 75 percent from the current 50 percent. The NIAID funding
would be the second phase after a one-year pause in FY 2004; in FY 2003,
NIAID initiated the first round of extramural biosafety
facilities construction with $373 million mostly for BSL-4 facilities.
The Senate would reject NIH plans to discontinue a $119 million program
for extramural construction in the National
Center for Research Resources
(NCRR) in FY 2005. The Senate’s $119 million appropriation for this
program would be a big chunk of the $373 million addition to the request.
The House, meanwhile, would agree with NIH in providing no money. Both
the House and the Senate would provide the requested $224 million in
FY 2005 for another NCRR program, the Institutional Development Award
(IDeA) program, up from $215 million in FY
2004. IDeA provides support to enhance the
research capacities of 23 states that have been underrepresented in
winning NIH funds in the past.
The
Senate bill does not contain language in the House version of the bill
that could change how NIH-funded research is published. The report
accompanying the House Labor-HHS bill includes nonbinding language calling
on NIH to outline a policy by December to allow public access to all
NIH-funded research results. Since the language first came to light
in July, NIH has already held a number of meetings with scientific journal
publishers and other interested groups. In early September, NIH published
a notice announcing a draft policy for public comment that would respond
to the report language. The draft policy would require that “grantees
and supported Principal Investigators provide the NIH with electronic
copies of all final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication
if the research was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding.” NIH would then archive the manuscript in its
PubMed Central database six months after publication, making
it freely available to the public. Public comments will be accepted
until early November. Several scientific publishers, including AAAS
(publisher of Science) are sending letters to key House
members urging Congress to forego a legislative solution and let NIH’s public review process determine the outcome, out of
concern that granting immediate free access to scientific journal articles
could undermine the financial foundations of scientific publishing.
NIH Priority Areas
Both the House and Senate would provide the necessary funds to carry out
NIH plans to expand its Roadmap for Medical Research. Last year,
NIH Director Elias Zerhouni introduced a Roadmap
for Medical Research involving all the NIH institutes and centers and
aimed at three areas of NIH research: improving clinical research (dubbed
“Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enteprise”),
encouraging interdisciplinary research (“Research Teams of the Future”),
and providing new knowledge and research tools to assist other researchers
(“New Pathways to Discovery”). Congress approved $12 million in the
Office of the Director (OD) to begin the Roadmap, but with contributions
from the other ICs and other OD funds total Roadmap funding is $128
million this year. Congress and NIH would agree to nearly double Roadmap
funding to $237 million in FY 2005.
Biodefense R&D continues to be a high priority in the NIH portfolio. NIH
identifies $1.8 billion for biodefense R&D
in FY 2005, up 4.5 percent from this year. As recently as two years
ago, the NIH investment was only $162 million.
Most NIH biodefense R&D is funded
by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),
which became the second-largest NIH institute in the aftermath of the
fall 2001 anthrax attacks. NIAID would continue to award biodefense
research grants in FY 2005, complete the establishment of 10 extramural
Regional Centers of Excellence in Biodefense
and Emerging Infectious Disease Research (RCE) with the designation
of the final 2 centers, provide $150 million for the second phase of
extramural construction grants for biosafety level (BSL) 3 and 4 laboratories around the nation,
and conduct animal and clinical trials of various candidate vaccines.
In addition to funds in the NIH budget, there would be an additional
$47 million in new funds from the Office of the (HHS) Secretary for
NIH to spend on developing medical countermeasures against nuclear or
radiological terrorist attacks.
HIV/AIDS research is another priority in the budget. The NIH HIV/AIDS
R&D portfolio would expand 2.8 percent in FY 2005 to reach $2.9
billion. The majority ($1.5 billion) of this research would be funded
by NIAID, the lead institute for AIDS research. Included in the FY 2005
budget and affirmed by the House is $100 million (the same as FY 2003
but down $50 million from this year) to be transferred to the Global
Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis – an international
public-private partnership to provide grants for the prevention, treatment,
and cure of these diseases. The Senate would add to the request to bring
the FY 2005 Global Fund contribution to $149 million, this year’s funding
level.
R&D
in other HHS Agencies
Although 95 percent of total R&D funding
at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) comes from the
NIH, there is also significant research funded by other HHS agencies
(see Table 2). Funding at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is primarily aimed at non-R&D
activities such as public health and health promotion activities and
more recently in biodefense for programs such
as increasing state and local preparedness and improving security, but
CDC also has a strong intramural research program at CDC laboratories.
The Senate would provide $556 million in a strong endorsement of CDC
R&D activities, up 6.8 percent from FY 2004. CDC (and NIH) also
receive research funds from the Office of the HHS Secretary (see Table
2) for a variety of biodefense-related
research activities; these activities would jump 61.5 percent to $189
million in the Senate plan.
Outlook and Next Steps
The Senate Labor-HHS
bill could clear the Senate in the next week as part of a rush to complete
FY 2005 appropriations before October 1. The House approved its version
on September 9. But with time running short for a House-Senate conference,
the bill is almost certain to be included in a year-end omnibus appropriations
bill, which could be delayed until well after October 1.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations
process. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D in FY 2005 appropriations, is
available on the AAAS R&D Web Site
(http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the “FY 2005
R&D” or the “What’s New” sections.)
- July 28, 2004 (revised September 9)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
