Sixth-year M.D.-Ph.D. student Jeff Russ
Three Weill Cornell students penned an op-ed, published March 12 in The Hill, decrying federal budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health for biomedical research.
The authors, fourth-year Ph.D. student Kari Fischer, fifth-year M.D.-Ph.D. student and student overseer Sophie McKenney, and sixth-year M.D.-Ph.D. student Jeff Russ, argue that insufficient federal funds for scientific research will have devastating consequences for patients and their families, aspiring and established physicians and scientists, and the United States' position as the world's biomedical leader.
NIH funding has remained flat for a decade, and was compounded by last year's sequestration. Although Congress restored some of the institutes' funding in January, the NIH says it is still $950 million less than its 2012 levels.
"Lawmakers would do well to consider two under-appreciated challenges of scientific progress: big discoveries take time and they take manpower," the students write.