I have devoted my professional career to developing cures for depression, addiction and psychiatric disorders, and I’m gravely concerned about the future of this work.
I run an addiction research laboratory that is funded by federal grants from the National Institutes of Health. Over the last decade my lab has used NIH grant money to identify a novel compound that has antidepressant-like effects in mice and rats. This compound also reduces alcohol drinking, especially in alcohol-dependent rats, and reduces cocaine relapse-like behavior in cocaine-addicted rats. We hope our discoveries will lead to new treatments for these devastating diseases.
Another NIH-funded project in my lab examines risk factors for opioid addiction. We have identified a few simple questions that can identify people at high risk for opioid addiction (as high as 75%) vs. those at low risk (as low as 2%). We hope these questions will help prevent people from developing opioid addiction by enabling doctors to flag high-risk patients.
These are just two examples of the extensive work going on in my lab, and my lab is just one of hundreds of labs at UC San Diego working to treat — or even cure — almost every human disease. Much of this work is performed by young students who live in our community and will be tomorrow’s doctors and scientists.
All of this is under an unprecedented attack. In the past several weeks there has been an almost total shutdown of funding from the NIH. Despite multiple rulings from federal judges, money from the NIH is still tied up in a bureaucratic snarl that appears to be intended to negate congressionally allocated funds to the NIH.
Research labs like mine are depending on the NIH to honor prior funding commitments and to fund new grants that are ranked in the top 10% of all grant applications. Even a few months of disruption of this funding will trigger massive layoffs, delaying or prematurely ending promising research.
In addition to the lost hope for better treatments for addiction and countless other diseases, ongoing disruptions at NIH will send shock waves through the local economy. Reduction in research funding for UC San Diego will cause job losses, hurt small and large businesses that research labs, halt university-inspired start-up companies and reduce the incentives for large pharmaceutical and biotech companies to locate their businesses in San Diego.
Even more broadly, as Americans we sometimes take for granted our status as the world leader in almost all aspects of science and technology. The current unraveling of the NIH threatens that status. Numerous other countries, including both our traditional allies and rivals, would like nothing better than to become world leaders in science and technology. We should not let that happen. If we fall behind, it will be hard or impossible to regain our status, and future generations will suffer the consequences.
Now is the time for La Jollans to voice their concerns to their congressional representatives. You can also talk with your family, co-workers and neighbors about what could be lost if we don’t protect NIH funding for lifesaving medical research. This is not the time to say nothing, because so much is at stake.
Abraham Palmer is a La Jolla resident and a professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego. ♦
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