U.S. President Barack Obama's proposed budget doesn't adequately fund dental research, the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) stated on its Web site.
The president has proposed a 3.5% increase to $32.1 billion in the overall budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but some of the institutes would get more money than others, with the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research only slated for a 2.5% raise to $423.5 million, the organization said.
The AADR credited President Obama with funding the institute with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus package. But the organization said that wasn't enough.
"This boom and bust cycle of medical research funding must stop. Science simply doesn't work that way," said AADR Executive Director Christopher Fox. "After our budgets were essentially flat from 2004-2009, we then received the entire five-year loss of purchasing power in one lump sum through the stimulus program. Now, despite all the evidence showing that NIH can effectively utilize these funds, we face a flat or declining budget for the next three years."
The AADR said it's most concerned about budget years beyond fiscal 2011. The proposed budget shows a 4.2% decrease at NIH in fiscal 2012 ($30.7 billion) and another 3.1% decrease in fiscal 2013 ($29.7 billion), before calling for slight increases thereafter ($30.4 billion in fiscal 2014 and $31.1 in fiscal 2015).
The budget does not breakdown the allocations to individual institutes and centers after 2011.
AADR called on the U.S. Congress to provide funding for thousands of grant applications that resulted from the stimulus funding.
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