Sequester Overshadows Science

For a sizeable number of scientists from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections was over before it began. 

With US$85 billion in automatic spending cuts in US defense and non-defense spending about to take effect, NIAID apparently advised several dozen attendees not to bother to attend. 

Richard Koup, chief of the immunology laboratory at NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center, wasn’t sure how many of his colleagues ended up skipping the show. But he said the travel restrictions extended to anyone who wasn’t presenting a talk, moderating a panel or who wasn’t a young investigator. 

The spending cuts, dubbed sequestration, were set in motion after a US Congressional committee proved unable to produce bipartisan federal budget legislation. The sequester took effect March 1, but the full effects of the budget cuts—which most agree will be severe—won’t be felt for some time. 

Koup said NIAID has been planning for the dreaded sequester since October. “We can’t hire people,” said Koup. “There are lots of projects I’d like to do. Everything is on hold.” 

There is much uncertainty about how deeply sequestration will cut into laboratory research. NIH Director Francis Collins has said his agency will cut expenditures by 5.1% this year alone—a cut of $1.6 billion.  The Foundation for AIDS Research, meanwhile, has estimated that the impact will be huge, with possibly 460 US National Institute of Health research grants going unfunded, including 50 specifically for AIDS vaccine research (see www.amfar.org). 

The dominant themes at this year’s CROI meeting were the burgeoning field of HIV cure science—capped by the first documented case of a child “functionally cured” of HIV (see IAVI Report blog and TAG blog )—and the global push to end AIDS. But the primary “water cooler” chatter seemed, at times, to be sequestration. 

“We’re going to need 10 David Baltimore’s to achieve and AIDS-free society,” said Myron Cohen, referring to the Nobel laureate at California Institute of Technology who has been in the forefront of AIDS vaccine development.  

Cohen, who is chief of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina and the principal investigator of the landmark HPTN052 trial that linked earlier initiation of ARVs with reduction in HIV transmission, said the budget cuts will dissuade  students from pursuing a career in research.  “My fear is that [sequestration} will cost us a generation of brilliant young scientists.” 

Kevin De Cock, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Center for Global Health and a co-organizer of the conference, reflected on the travel restrictions keeping some scientists from this year’s meeting. De Cock noted that about two decades ago, when CROI met for the first time, a controversial HIV travel ban barred some scientists outside the US from attending the meeting. “Twenty years later, we’re facing cancellations because of other concerns.” 

During his Wednesday plenary talk on the status of the global pandemic among men who have sex with men (MSM), Johns Hopkins researcher Chris Beyrer singled out the vaccine research that the Military HIV Research Program (MHRP)—part of the US Department of Defense—has been doing in Thailand, including an upcoming trial it plans to conduct in Thai MSM. 

“That the US military is now able to do trials in MSM as part of a goal of protecting our troops is an outcome of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and represents a significant human rights victory,” said Beyrer, referring to the overturn of a US policy that barred openly gay, lesbian and bisexual persons from military service. “Let’s hope they [MHRP] have a vaccine victory as well, and let’s hope the current DOD program survives the current fiscal crisis.”