President Obama recently submitted his 2016 budget plan. Included in the new budget is $214 million for "precision medicine." The plan will give money to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to establish a large infrastructure of research and prevention. A majority of the money will go to the NIH to establish a large genomic database with around a million participants. Obama hopes that the NIH's large research will be successful in identifying certain genes that get infected with disease and try to discover cures or preventatives for disease. Another sum of money will go to the NIH's cancer research to really understand and hopefully make breakthroughs involving cancer. The FDA and the ONC will be payed to manage the testings safety and regulate the information gained by the genomic database.
The funding Obama is setting out for this project is similar to the advances Teddy Roosevelt made American consumers during his administration. After Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle," many were shocked to learn the horrific conditions that surrounded the food we eat. Thus came the Pure Food and Drug Act that set out regulations for food and drug companies to ensure ethical and sanitary practices. Elements of the Pure Food and Drug Act still exists in law today and will apply to the research in precision medicine.
Source: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150130/NEWS/301309958/white-house-proposes-215-million-new-regs-for-precision-medicine
Even though some may think that it is a waste of money and resources, this research could have an enormous impact on American lives.
ReplyDeleteIt truly is important that measures are taken to keep the food and drug industries clean because of the exorbitant amount of people that are affected by the nature of the goods they produce.
ReplyDelete-Vivie Behrens (Period 6)