You
In other news, a Trump administration policy to limit the overhead expenses of medical
research has powerhouse research universities like UW Madison reeling. Most medical research
is funded by the National Institutes for Health. The new policy would limit NIH funding for
indirect costs to 15 percent, far below the 55.5 percent overhead costs at Madison. The
cut is currently blocked by a federal court. UW School of Medicine and Public Health Dean
Robert Golden is here to describe the implications and Dr. thanks very much for being here. It's
pleasure. So what would the loss of $65 million which is what I understand it is a year by way
of cuts to these indirect costs mean to research at UW Madison? This would be devastating. This
would be apocalyptic. This would mean that we would have to dramatically scale back and probably end
really important research going from the bench to the bedside into the community in areas like
cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and neurologic illnesses. So UW lists those costs again as being
55.5 percent of its research expenditures. What does that go toward? Well here's the one way to
think about it. It's Valentine's Day and I'm going to cook dinner for Shaddon to celebrate.
When I go out and buy the groceries, the eggs and the cheese for a quiche, those are direct costs.
But I need to have a refrigerator to keep them safe. I need to be paying my electric bills in
order to have the cookware work. And so the indirect costs are literally freezers that literally keep
things safe for both clinical as well as preclinical research. And they are essential otherwise
the food goes bad and you can't prepare dinner. So is it possible to reduce those costs to 15%
and if forced what goes? Well the infrastructure goes. Our equipment becomes old and not replaced.
New buildings are not built. Renovations for both equipment and the actual buildings are not there.
The staff who are required to fill out all the forms for the federal government ensuring that
our people and the labs are safe cannot be kept on. So it would be absolutely devastating. And yet
it's being made out as bloated administrative expenditures to pad the books on the backs of
taxpayers. What's your response to that? Anybody who has been in academics, anybody who has been
in research would never use the word bloated. Shoe string living on the edge. Funding already
is so competitive and so low that every day every investigator is looking for more efficient ways
for her to keep her research going. What research is happening right now that would be heard?
We have important clinical trials in cancer for example for patients who have failed to
respond to conventional treatments. These are important not simply for the science but for
those individual patients. We have new promising treatments that have gone from basic discoveries
into practice looking at potential new therapies for blinding illness. We have a lot of research
that really focuses in on asthma and childhood asthma in particular, nationally renowned research.
All of this including the laboratory basic science that leads to new therapeutics as well as the
clinical trials looking for safety and effectiveness would be at serious risk. What are some of the
kind of famous breakthroughs found through research at UW-Madison? Well in fact one of the very first
medications for cancer treatment, Phi fluoro uracil, was discovered right here. We have also had
amazing technological breakthroughs with tomotherapy, a sophisticated way of doing imaging that not
only has help countless patients worldwide but has led to spin-off companies that's built up our
economy. There are so many exciting new breakthroughs going on but they build on a tradition that has
been present here ever since the founding of the NIH. So the cuts are currently blocked as we
mentioned. What measure of solace is that? Well it's just a temporary reprieve. We do hope
you have to be hopeful in order to be in academics nowadays that patient voices voices of reason
will lead to a more than temporary restraint. It's not to say that our system is perfect. It's
one of the best in the world but there might be ways to continue what's already happening to look
for the most efficient ways that we can continue to invest in research so that we're investing in
the health of people and populations. All right Dr. Robert Golden, thanks very much. Thank you.
They must have realized that what they were doing was illegal as well as on wise but this is just
one of a series of things but this one would be really really deadly for universities like ours.
Yeah and then you know they're talking about universities like Harvard or something but
are they they're huge endowments that's what they always point to. I mean UW has its own but not
you can't compare. Yeah but those huge endowments are wisely being invested in stuff. Yeah.
Okay it isn't as though they're just sitting there and if you go to the Harvard campus
they have the advantage of doing all the investments beyond what we are able to afford to do in cyber
security. Something you're familiar with but you know right now it takes a lot of running just
to stay in the same place in terms of the safety of patient data. There's brilliant hackers out
there in terms of the safety for the you know radioactive compounds that we're developing for
thermogonostics for cancer treatment and so you can't say oh that's just fluff. It's the kind of
things ranging from effective hoods to protect the gases that you're working with. You can't
say the research can go on without the indirects because the indirects make it safe to do the
research and Harvard you know I wish I had their IT structure. We have pretty damn good IT here
but it's nowhere near the computing capacity that they have so they're not just sitting around
counting their dollars or putting it in there and you know it's kind of like saying well you know
so our teachers are getting a pay cut but they get paid more than the folks that
clean the schoolhouses yeah but teachers still can't afford to get a pay cut. They have to deal
with inflation and the inflation especially in pharmaceuticals that we need for research and
other biomaterials it's costly. Well we will follow this and thank you would like to have you back
when there's some understanding of what's going on.