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Print Edition StoriesFriday, January 23, 2009
Inside Life Sciences & Medical Frontiers
Jack Wilson: NIH funding means jobs now
By James M. Connolly, Associate Editor
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When the U.S. Congress and the administration of President Barack Obama get to work on an economic recovery package, earmarking even $3 billion for a life sciences initiative would translate almost immediately into growth and jobs in the labs and in fields such as construction, according to key educators and life sciences company executives.
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative recently sent a letter to the Massachusetts congressional delegation that called for an increase in National Institutes of Health funding through any economic recovery package. One of the authors, University of Massachusetts president Jack Wilson, said in a subsequent interview, “When that money hits, there will be seven new jobs for every dollar funded. That’s only step one. Down the road there are enormous potential benefits.”
The Jan. 6 letter was signed by Wilson, Harvard University president Drew Faust, MIT president Susan Hockfield and Genzyme Corp. chairman and CEO Henri Termeer as co-chairs of the collaborative, which represents about 40 life sciences companies, municipalities, community organization and educational institutions.
In the letter, the collaborative noted, “While the positive economic impacts of NIH funding are demonstrable, so too are the long-term negative effects of five consecutive years of funding levels below inflation.” It continued, “The result is a slowdown in scientific progress, a reduction in the new business spinouts derived from biomedical research, and a delay in the delivery of new therapies to patients.”
Wilson, who said the collaborative is working with like organizations in other states to contact their own representatives and senators, said that just restoring the spending power that has been lost to inflation during five years of flat funding would have an immediate impact.
“If you account for inflation, we’ve seen a decrease of 13 percent. Only two of our 10 grant applications have been able to be funded. Here we have the ability to crank this up immediately,” said Wilson, estimating that $3 billion out of what is expected to be a $700 billion economic recovery package would allow NIH to fund some of the backlog of pending grants.
Wilson said that economists studying UMass’ research efforts have estimated that each dollar of funding would bring $8 in benefit through jobs and revenue. He said other estimates at the national level place the direct impact at 7-to-1. Wilson said that funding through NIH will create research jobs immediately and that more jobs would emerge as research spawned new companies. Additional funding for university infrastructure could generate construction jobs in as little as six months, he said.
A key to the NIH approach, he said, is that it wouldn’t provide the “sugar high” that the 2008 tax rebate plan did, but instead would provide a lasting impact. “If the money just goes out to the population, as it did the last time in a lump sum, we’ve already done that experiment and it didn’t work. A lot went into savings, and a lot went into spending that didn’t provide any benefit,” he said.
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