ST. LOUIS -- Of all the blinkered buzz-saw cuts in this year’s $85 billion spending sequestration, perhaps none is as counterproductive -- or as flat-out boneheaded -- as the one now hitting medical research under way in a refurbished industrial expanse of central St. Louis.
Sequester cuts to the rapidly developing process of turning genetic research into a major 21st-century industry -- and saving lives and health care costs -- are the equivalent of trying to build the Interstate Highway System with no ramps or the transcontinental railroad without the final miles in the middle....
Simply put, St. Louis can’t afford the setback.
Other key academic centers that receive significant NIH funding in genomics and now stand to lose a big chunk of it include Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania. While the institutions are elite, the potential benefits of their work could not be more Main Street.
The cuts are especially ironic because it was the federal government that made this new industry possible. And it is not yet commercially viable enough for the private sector to fully take it over. Nor should the private sector ever have all of the power and knowledge in an industry fraught with regulatory concerns.
Begun under the first Bush administration and amplified by President Bill Clinton, the Human Genome Project was a model of economic development and federal foresight that even Jeffersonian founders would admire. Clinton routinely mentions the project as he argues for new pro-business roles for government. President Barack Obama is following suit, proposing a new $100 million mapping effort, this one of the human brain....
