Media Cover DOE Nuclear Medicine Cuts

Under the banner headline “Nuclear Medicine Funds to Disappear Under Plan,” Newsday writer Jamie Talan reported on March 2 on proposed budget cuts to nuclear medicine research by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The author detailed the cuts, which would eliminate DOE funding of nuclear medicine research at 23 universities and 4 labs, with funding dropping from $37 million to less than $13 million in 2005 and be entirely eliminated thereafter. “We judged that the DOE was not the appropriate place for research on nuclear medicine,” budget office spokesman Noam Nuesner told Newsday. He said the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “would be a better source.” But NIH has also been hit by budget cuts and has been further constrained by increased obligations to support research related to homeland security issues.

The effects, noted Newsday, could be “devastating.” Thomas Budinger, PhD, head of nuclear medicine and functional imaging at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, CA) noted that his lab would lose more than $2 million in funding for the first year. “I’m struggling now to cover that loss,” he said. “This is a shock to all of us.” Newsday also spoke with Joanna Fowler, PhD, director of Brookhaven’s Center for Translational Neuroimaging and a frequent Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Newsline contributor. She said, “We need funding to take this technology into the future.”

Newsday

Copyright Society of Nuclear Medicine Apr 2005