Obama gives grant to aid US medical research

Grants for medical research

Wednesday saw President Barack Obama proclaiming $5 billion in new government grants for medical research that will go to help fight cancer, autism, and heart disease. It is hoped the money will also help boost the economy.

Obama described the money as crucial to improving public health and helping add jobs to an economy that has seen unemployment surge. Visiting the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health, he said that its projects illustrate the dual goals of the $787 billion economic stimulus bill: rescuing the economy and laying the groundwork for future generations' stability.

"The American people are looking forward to the next set of discoveries that you are working on today," Obama told employees.

The stimulus bill included $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). More than $1 billion of it would be directed to work on genetic research that could identify the causes and cures for ailments ranging from heart and lung disease to blood diseases and autism.

The NIH is a part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.

The White House said that the $5 billion in grants, would support some 12,000 existing projects and create thousands of jobs over the next two years for researchers and educators, as well as for medical equipment makers and suppliers.

Obama called it the "single largest boost to biomedical research in history."

The investment includes $175 million for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to collect more than 20,000 tissue samples from more than 20 cancers, and determine in detail all of the genetic changes in thousands of these tumor samples.

The cancer study involves more than 150 scientists at dozens of institutions around the country, the White House said in a statement released before Obama took the stage, joined by his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and his NIH director, Dr. Francis S. Collins.

"We can't know where this research will lead. That's the nature of science," Collins said.

"Breakthroughs in medical research take far more than the occasional flash of brilliance, as important as that can be," Obama said. "Progress takes time, it takes hard work, it can be unpredictable, it can require a willingness to take risks, going down some blind alleys occasionally. Figuring out what doesn't work is sometimes as important as figuring out what does."

Obama added that NIH research should focus on the public health, not investors or corporate owners.

"We know that the work you do would not get done if left solely to the private sector. Some research does not lend itself to quick profit," he said. "And that's why places like the NIH were founded."

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