Bush’s AIDS Funding Plan Is Called Decrease : Health: Sources say proposal seeks a 3.8% increase in research spending, an amount below the inflation rate.
The Bush Administration will propose spending $873 million on AIDS research for fiscal 1993, an amount that does not keep pace with inflation and is far less than what government scientists have said is needed to pursue critical new scientific leads, according to congressional sources.
The 1993 proposal is for spending $32 million more than in the current fiscal year, an increase of 3.8%. But that is less than the current inflation rate of 4% to 5% for biomedical research, and just a little more than half of the 7% increase proposed for other National Institutes of Health research activities, sources said.
Word of the small increase evoked strong protests from AIDS investigators nationwide who believe that AIDS research is at a crucial juncture. Many researchers predicted that insufficient funding will translate into missed opportunities.
“We have much more in the way of leads that we ought to be following than we did four or five years ago,” said Dr. Robert T. Schooley, an AIDS researcher who heads the infectious diseases division of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. “Now is not the time to be cutting back on the effort.”
The latest figures show a continuing loss of the edge that AIDS research enjoyed during the early years of the epidemic, and may also reflect some of the resentment believed to be smoldering within other biomedical research programs over the huge increases AIDS activities received during that time.
The latest numbers show a particular erosion of support from the research agencies’ own parent, the Department of Health and Human Services, where the biggest cut was imposed before the request was sent to the White House.
The funding level is not expected to be changed by Congress, which--in sharp contrast to earlier years--has shown little inclination in recent budgets to appropriate more money for AIDS than the President has requested.
Researchers predicted that the lack of funding would seriously damage virtually every aspect of AIDS research, including drug and vaccine development, immunology and virology.
“It’s going to cut across all research lines--vaccines, therapy, new diagnostic breakthroughs,” said Dr. Thomas C. Merigan, director of the center for AIDS research at Stanford University. “We have many new drugs in the pipeline, and we’re clearly not going to be able to test them as quickly as possible.”
Schooley predicted that the vaccine program would be especially hard hit. “Vaccine research has to be staged when the science is ready and now the science is ready and the funds aren’t there,” he said.
Jeff Levi, director of government affairs for the AIDS Action Council, a Washington-based lobbying group, said the consequences also could “spill over into the contributions that AIDS research is making into other diseases.”
An HHS official, who requested anonymity, on Saturday defended the department’s AIDS research budget decisions.
“We have increased our effort in AIDS by over 50% since this President has taken office,” he said. “It has been an extraordinary effort. It is second only in support to cancer, although it is unfortunate that we have to make these comparisons.
“Never have we spent so much per capita on any illness as we have on AIDS, especially given what is occurring in other areas of the budget.”
The proposed 3.8% increase in AIDS research funding comes in a year when overall domestic spending could rise as much as nearly 6% under a 1990 agreement between the White House and Congress.
The 1993 AIDS research request was cut at every step of the budget process.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of AIDS research activities for the National Institutes of Health, sought $1.329 billion for all AIDS research. His request went to National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, who reduced the figure to $1.195 billion before sending it to Dr. James O. Mason, assistant secretary for health and head of the Public Health Service. Mason cut it to $1.009 billion.
The request then went to HHS Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, who imposed the biggest cut in the process. Sullivan reduced the request to $893 million before sending it to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB then arrived at the final $873 million figure.
The White House in recent days has orchestrated a series of disclosures in advance of the release of the federal budget to call attention to domestic initiatives expected to receive favorable attention. AIDS funding, however, has not been among them.
Earlier this month, Bush held a highly publicized meeting with Earvin (Magic) Johnson, the HIV-infected former Los Angeles Lakers’ guard who is now a member of the National Commission on AIDS. At the meeting, Bush promised to do more for AIDS and defended current Administration spending.
“The President’s recent assertion to Magic Johnson that we’re doing everything we can is directly contradicted by these numbers,” says Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. “If he wants to know what should be done, he needs only to ask his scientists.”
