Medical researchU.S. risks losing out to Asia in medical research

Medical research saves lives, suffering, and dollars — while also creating jobs and economic activity. The United States has long led the world, with hundreds of thousands of jobs and marketable discoveries generated by government research funding every year. Top students from around the world come here for training — and often stay to help fuel medical innovation.

Now, in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers warn that the United States risks losing out to Asia as the hub of medical discovery.

The result, they caution, could be a “brain drain” of top young researchers, and the loss of untold discoveries and economic activity. A University of Michigan Health System release reports that the authors are two physician researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, and an American researcher who left the United States for better job prospects in Singapore.

They compiled data on five Asian countries — China, India, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan — that are all boosting their government support for medical research right now. All five have a long-term plan for increased support for such research, as part of efforts to boost their national economies and world standing.

By contrast, American medical scientists and physician researchers face almost certain cuts to federal research funding.

At best, the authors say, funding for the National Institutes of Health — which supports most U.S. medical research — will fail to keep pace with inflation next year.

At worst, if the federal budget falls off the “fiscal cliff” of automatic cuts, American medical research spending will fall by 8 percent, with thousands of researchers cut off from funding. One estimate says this could cost the United States $4.5 billion in economic activity. There are also proposals to cut entire health research agencies.

By contrast, China has increased spending on medical research by 67 percent, South Korea by 24 percent, India by 15 percent, Singapore by 12.5 percent, and Taiwan by 4 percent in the most recent year for which data was available.

“In recent years, NIH funding has not kept pace with growth in biomedical innovation, making it harder for scientists to win grants,” says first author Gordon Sun. M.D., an otolaryngologist and health researcher who is currently a 2011-13 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at U-M, supported by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “Meanwhile, these five Asian countries