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Philadelphia Daily News John Baer Column: Medical Research - Who Needs It?

Posted on: Thursday, 16 February 2006, 06:00 CST

By John Baer, Philadelphia Daily News

Feb. 16--THE MOST interesting public proposal in Pennsylvania in my memory, creating a $1 billion medical research fund, faces the fate of other interesting proposals here - political resistance and death by naysaying.

In the past I've described our Legislature as a place where good ideas go to die. This might be a prime example.

The proposal, offered as part of Gov. Ed's budget, uses $500 million in dollar-for-dollar matching funds for accelerated research.

The money comes from a small portion of the state's tobacco settlement to secure grants to seek cures for cancer, diabetes, AIDS, birth defects, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, you name it.

There is nothing else in the country like it. It ought to be adopted.

With world-class facilities at Penn, Penn State, Pitt, Carnegie-Mellon and so on, the state ought to push and fund such research at least as fervently as it pushed and funded professional sports stadiums.

Games are great. Health is more important.

Dubbed the Jonas Salk Legacy Fund after the late Pittsburgh physician who discovered the polio vaccine in 1955, it could attract other investment, top scientists and a top-dollar work force in addition to maybe curing disease.

So, naturally, Republican response to a Democratic governor is (now remember you're in Pennsylvania) what?

"A major non-starter," says GOP Senate Leader Chip Brightbill.

On the day the plan was offered last week, Brightbill said Ed wants it "so he can run around in an election year and say, 'I'm doing great things.' "

To which I say two things.

First, this reminds me of a point Rendell made about the Legislature in 2004 in what he thought was a private conference call with Pittsburgh officials: "I wish I could tell you how difficult it is to get them to do anything... If tomorrow we could cure cancer if they raised taxes, they wouldn't raise them."

Amen.

Second, if Rendell, Brightbill or, for that matter, Beelzebub, lord of the flies, wants to "run around" taking credit for $1 billion in new medical research, so what? - so long as the research happens.

Republicans say current funding through the tobacco fund (by the state Health Department's Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement program) is reliable and predictable. They argue using any of that money threatens research since the tobacco fund can drop over time. Some claim further borrowing for anything is irresponsible.

Any excuse, in other words, to avoid progressive policy.

But state Community and Economic Development Secretary Dennis Yablonsky, who's honchoing the Salk effort, says using just half the current annual research funds to secure bonds allows the state to do in two years what otherwise would take 12 to 15 years, without risk to taxpayers.

This is an aggressive, innovative idea. It's the kind of thing stick-in-the-mud Pennsylvania ought to do.

I mean, a state supporting the largest, most expensive full-time legislature in America (while using, by the way, just 13.6 percent of its constitutional debt limit), can surely support new efforts to enhance the future health of its citizens.

To me, the general GOP take on scientific research, best reflected in President Bush's views on stem cells, global warming and "intelligent design," raises naysaying to dangerous levels.

Medical breakthroughs are non-partisan. Medical research should be, too.

The high irony here is that Jonas Salk declined his right, and untold personal wealth, to seek a patent for his vaccine, opting instead to stand aside and serve the public. In his memory and for the sake of true public service, naysaying and politics should stand aside on this.

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Source: The Philadelphia Daily News

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