RESTON, Va. November 10, 2005 -- The House and Senate accepted President Bush's request to cut $23 million in funding in the Department of Energy's fiscal year 2006 budget yesterday, effectively eliminating all money for basic nuclear medicine/molecular imaging research.

"The outcome is clear: Basic nuclear and molecular imaging research will decline beginning in 2006, and our professional community may have to fight a hard battle to maintain other federal research funding in 2007," said Society of Nuclear Medicine President Peter S. Conti, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of radiology, clinical pharmacy and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. "This budget cut pulls the plug on discoveries that could have translated into better disease management for millions of patients fighting oncological, neurological and cardiovascular diseases each year," he added. Speaking for the society, with its more than 16,000 physician, technologist and scientist members, Conti said, "While SNM acknowledges the budget constraints faced by federal appropriators, we cannot afford to sacrifice medical research that has a proven record of leading to transformational changes in the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening cancer, heart and other diseases that affect millions every year."

Basic molecular imaging/nuclear medicine research has been funded by the DOE since biomedical research was initially included in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (the Atomic Energy Commission was the DOE's predecessor). DOE-funded medical and scientific advances include the Anger gamma camera; PET, the driving force of modern molecular imaging/nuclear medicine; 18F-FDG, which promotes metabolic imaging; and the 99mMo/99m Tc generator. "The termination of this funding weakens our nation's leadership position in generating atoms for medical use and bench-to-bedside programs," said Conti. He indicated that SNM will fight to restore funding for basic research in the FY 2007 budget and will explore ways to continue existing programs through supplemental funding, reprogramming or other mechanisms to cover the gap created by this Congressional action.
President Bush's proposed fiscal plan, released in February, originally cut funding in DOE's Medical Applications and Measurement Science Program from approximately $37 million in fiscal year 2005 to $14 million in FY 2006. Most of the $14 million will go to research in unrelated fields, thus eliminating funding for more than 80 projects in molecular medicine at four national laboratories and more than 20 medical research universities. Federal money has been diverted to help fund more than $130 million in congressionally designated earmarked projects--an increase of over $50 million from the preceding year. According to reports, many of these projects have little if any relationship to the type of fundamental research previously supported by the DOE Medical Applications and Measurement Science program.

SNM is based in Reston, Va.; additional information can be found online at www.snm.org.

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