Cancer research advocates hope Congress will nix cuts

Washington -- Not since the younger sister of Ellen Sigal, PhD, died of cancer 20 years ago has funding for research into the disease that also killed her parents been in such jeopardy.

"We're extremely upset. I don't know how else to phrase it," said Dr. Sigal, co-founder and chair of Friends of Cancer Research, referring to President Bush's proposal to cut $40 million from the National Cancer Institute budget for fiscal year 2007.

If the proposed drop from $4.79 billion to $4.75 billion survives, it will be the first time the NCI witnessed a decline in its budget since the early 1980s. But Congress, in an election year, might upset the president's plans, which are part of a larger $4.2 billion reduction in spending on labor, health and human services, and education compared with this year.

The Senate already has approved two amendments that address the issue. Sens. Arlen Specter (R, Pa.) and Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) pushed through an increase of $7 billion for the entire Labor-HHS appropriations bill.

Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D, Md.) and Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.) saw their amendment approved to increase funding for cancer research and prevention by $390 million, including $245 million for the National Institutes of Health, home to the National Cancer Institute.

The picture in the House is harder to read. At press time, research advocates were hoping that the chamber would vote on the matter the week of April 24. The House leadership is under pressure from two dozen moderate Republicans, including Rep. Mike Castle (R, Del.), who oppose the $4.2 billion in cuts.

Castle has announced plans to try to include the $7 billion proposed by the Senate in an amendment to the budget resolution on the House floor.

"Instead of closing tax loopholes and addressing corporate welfare, we too often look to eliminate the programs that are utilized by the neediest among us," he said. "We continue to fund the war with emergency spending and turn a blind eye to the waste in the departments of Defense and Homeland Security."

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt defended the cuts, saying the administration was forced to make "hard choices" about well-intentioned programs.

Including the $7 billion would keep federal labor and health funding at 2005 levels. This is an indicator, Dr Sigal said, of the real cuts being made to health research funding across the board. Last year's NIH budget was flat, meaning that when rising costs are factored in, the agency lost ground financially, research advocates say.

They argue that studies on cancer, having benefited from a doubling of the NIH budget between 1998 and 2003, produced real results.

Funding struggle ahead

Deficit hawks in the House want to keep a tight rein on the spending, and it is unclear whether Castle and like-minded Republican moderates can succeed.

The House leadership will not allow the budget resolution, which acts as a funding blueprint, to come to the floor unless it is certain of having enough votes to pass. So cancer researchers may have to wait until later in the year, during the appropriations process, to find out whether their funding is safe, a moderate Republican source said.

If it doesn't pass a budget resolution, the House could be expected to use the president's version of the spending plan as a baseline, which would force the Senate and the House to work out a compromise later.

Dr. Sigal wrote in a recent article that NIH leadership had said it needed budget increases of up to 10% to sustain its rate of discovery. She said the cuts in the pipeline would reduce researchers' ability to conduct clinical trials, cutting the rate of patient accrual and delaying significantly the benefit to cancer patients.

The reductions also could delay the development of early detection and screening tools and the delivery of proteomic technology to doctors, she added.