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Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | March 28, 2017
Don't hamstring research, said cardiologists recently, in response to President Donald Trump's proposed 20-percent cut to the NIH budget.
Dr. Mary Walsh, president of the ACC and director of heart failure and transplantation programs at St. Vincent Heart Center in Indianapolis, speaking at a recent meeting of the organization, said, "All of medicine and all of investigation need to make our voices heard," she said
according to Reuters. "This could become a unifying theme. Science matters!"
The proposed $5.8 billion cut to the NIH budget could cause a major setback to research into cardiology especially, as many of the drugs that are used to treat heart disease have come from NIH research.
"There are trials that we have to do that will never be funded by drug companies. We rely on NIH," said Dr. Leslie Cho, head of preventive cardiology at Cleveland Clinic.
Other cardiologists concur, advising that the issue is critically important and may not be getting enough notice.
"I'm a little concerned that there hasn't been a complete eruption that the NIH is being targeted for such substantial cuts. This is a landmine waiting to explode," Dr. Clyde Yancy, a former American Heart Association president, told the news service, adding that, “laboratories will be shut down; personnel would be released; ideas would be left incomplete; proposals would go unaddressed. We just can't afford to have the pace of scientific discovery slowed down like this."
Chief of cardiology at Cleveland Clinic Dr. Steven Nissen, explained that Lipitor, the popular cholesterol-fighting drug, came from early funding by the NIH.
"How many millions of heart attacks and lives have been changed by that,” he advised.
The NIH also supports fellowships – the future of health care. "I know the struggles that our fellows face looking for career development awards, and that's all NIH-funded grants. So the pipeline that we need for future researchers will be at significant risk," said Dr. Andrew Kates, who oversees a Washington University in St. Louis cardiology fellowship program.
Dr. Patrick O'Gara, director of clinical cardiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a former ACC president, pointed out to the news agency that NIH institutions also help local economies, so cuts would impact the workforce nationwide, as well. With that in mind, he told Reuters, "I'm hopeful that this is just an opening gambit and Congress ... will look at things differently."
