Is Washington Bottlenecking SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?

• Author: Steelman, Aaron
• Position: Private sector has been responsible for medical breakthroughs

The private sector, which has been responsible for some of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, finds that the Federal government increasingly is crowding out investment and philanthropic giving.

In December, 1997, Pres. Clinton's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS issued its second progress report. It said that---despite establishing the Office of AIDS Research and declaring the development of an AIDS vaccine "a new national goal for science," one comparable to Pres. John F. Kennedy's call for the U.S. to put a man on the moon--the Administration's efforts have been subpar.

"Progress in the federal response to AIDS has stalled in recent months," charged the report, and funding for AIDS research "remains inadequate." Concurring with its general thrust, Sean Strub, publisher of Poz, a magazine for people with HIV and AIDS, said that the Clinton Administration "is immune to rhetoric; they just don't give a damn."

Central to the arguments of such critics is the assumption that the Federal government must do something about AIDS because, if it doesn't, nobody else will. Although government AIDS researchers have produced little, they are, the activists maintain, the best hope for progress against the dreaded disease.

Is that true? Should individuals dying of AIDS, or those who simply are concerned about the disease, place all their eggs in one basket--namely, in the hands of the Federal government? The historical record leads one to believe that the answer to those questions is no. The private sector has a long and distinguished record in advancing scientific research, having been responsible for some of the most significant scientific breakthroughs this century. If given the chance, the private sector likely would produce tangible results in the area of AIDS research as well.

* In the 1780s, Edward Jenner, an English country doctor, began work on a vaccination for smallpox. After more than a dozen years of experiments funded entirely out of his own pocket, he found one. Jubilant, Jenner wanted to share his discovery with the public that had been terrorized by the dreaded disease. He approached the Royal Society of London, hoping that the government-sponsored group would publish the results of his work. He was turned down, told that the concept was too revolutionary and the evidence weak. So, he decided to publish his research himself. Appearing in 1798, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of Variolae Vaccinae quickly...