When did "CDC Funding" become an oxymoron?
Per a recent Nature-News article, the cuts would impact the CDC core budget and impact grants to "local, county and state public-health departments to monitor infectious diseases or track food-borne outbreaks." If these cuts stand, the CDC budget will have fallen by 20% since 2010.
Just last week, Trish Perl circulated an email query asking what key concerns we have in infection prevention over the next 2-3 years. Many were concerned about increased work demands for public reporting and mandates. Mike and Dan had several other concerns they will hopefully share with us in future posts. My main concern was the loss of the CDCs voice in the fight against antibiotic resistant bacteria as their funding is slowly cut. I guess it will be quickly and not slowly.
Source: Meredith Wadman in Nature 483, 19 (01 March 2012) doi:10.1038/483019a
I haven't done a review of all the Federal science programs, but CDC isn't the only one under stress. After inflation, the NASA budget is down 50% from what it was 20 years ago. (I worked for NASA contractors from 1988 to 1996.) see http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/27/10521226-does-nasas-budget-need-a-boost
ReplyDeleteWars, tax cuts, and unfunded benefits like the Medicare drug benefit have really done a job on the ability to fund "discretionary" programs. Besides the certainty of killing a lot of innocent people who don't deserved to be killed, this is another reason to avoid another war - this time with Iran.