Francis Collins recently noted at a breakfast sponsored by Bloomberg that federal funding for the National Institutes of Health has held steady at about $27 billion since 2003.
The inflation-adjusted level of funding has dropped considerably.
That's absurd.
We have great new technology tools, such as high-speed gene sequencing and faster computers, for studying whatever it is that causes Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and other conditions that ruin millions of people's lives and lead to huge acute medical care and long-term care (LTC) costs.
There seem to be indications that, once we really understand how to prevent or cure one of those conditions, we may have a much easier time understanding and fighting the other conditions.
