Slash science and you cut into our future

Ian Frazer

HONOURABLE Wayne Swan, Treasurer. Dear Wayne:

CUTTING funding for health and medical research in the May 10 budget is as logical as having a lobotomy because you need to lose weight. My advice is don't do it.

Because of Queensland's Smart State strategy I have a long association with the Australian scientific research community and I have never known them to be so angry at a federal government. Nor have I seen them organise protests and rallies such as the ones on Tuesday last week.

Don't think you can ignore them simply because they are a small community; the strength of their arguments against the cuts is affecting public opinion.

It saddens me to see this, as Labor traditionally has been supportive of medical research. You have a problem. How do you explain reducing funding for lifesaving research work like that being undertaken by our best scientific minds such as former Australians of the year Fiona Stanley and Ian Frazer? The answer is, not very easily.

The cold reality is Julia Gillard has already warned there will be pain as the government works on bringing the budget back into surplus in 2012-13. I know that getting the budget back into the black is vital, but you have to understand the resultant effect of these suggested cuts on Australia's future.

I know federal treasurer is the toughest job in the government after prime minister, especially in a year when the budget has already been savaged by natural disasters. I also appreciate that the government's reputation hangs on that 2012-13 surplus and, with it, the government's re-election chances. Economic management is always a crucial election issue, especially for Labor.

You have been a good Treasurer and your role during the global financial crisis has been too often underestimated. But now you are again confronted with the difficult job of determining budgetary priorities; these too will affect the country's future.

Adequately funded health and medical research is vital to Australia's future and should be treated as such in the budget. No industry sector wants to give up funding without a fight but some are more deserving than others and, when it comes to determining priorities, health and medical research should be at the top of the pile.

Britain, which is in a worse financial situation than Australia, did not cut medical research funding because the British Prime Minister realised how important such investment is for the future growth of the British economy and the health system.

So why should health and medical research be funded by governments?

Australian research has resulted in development of the heart pacemaker, humidicrib, medical ultrasound, bionic ear and cervical cancer vaccine, to list a few of our scientists' prominent lifesaving achievements.

Funding retains Australia's smartest scientists and reduces Australia's future health costs. Medical research has helped increase longevity and significantly improve the quality of life during the past 50 years. Australia's health and medical research directly employs more than 39,000 people and through therapeutic advances has delivered a more efficient healthcare system.

If there were cuts of the rumoured $400 million in medical research funds it would result in a loss of about 4000 staff research salaries which, when leveraged by three or four to one from other funding sources, would result in a loss of 12,000 to 15,000 jobs, in addition to the loss of the innovative capacity that $1.2 billion buys.

Medical researchers require training and if this is reduced it will have a long-term effect on our ability to compete globally. Medical research projects cannot be switched on and off. It takes a short while to train a truck driver but 10 to15 years to train a world-class researcher.

If there are no research dollars for a particular year, researchers, who like the rest of us have to feed their families, are forced to move offshore, taking with them their valuable research and its outcomes. Australia loses more than the personnel; we lose their intellectual capacity and future potential of their projects.

The resultant brain drain would see our best minds leave for the US and countries such as India, China, Singapore and South Korea, which are building knowledge economies by investing in their research capacities.

Research has important economic benefits. Two-thirds of all Australian patents are for medical research breakthroughs and for every $1m of funding from the government's National Health and Medical Research Council, eight patents are produced.

Research provides sustained investment and health savings. Frazer's development of the Gardasil vaccine is expected to prevent 70 per cent of cervical cancers, which is a significant health outcome; additionally it will save $500m each year in costs to the health system, as well as the economic benefits from the financial returns of $63m a year.

Wayne, it is essential for government to take a long-term view towards research as outcomes such as Gardasil took 20 years to develop. This is not just about economic growth but also improving the health of Australians.

Too often governments overlook the influence of research on clinical care. Those involved in research are part of international networks that are trialling future treatments. In the US, hospitals that are ranked as providing the highest quality clinical care are those that receive the highest level of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Excellent clinical care arises from world-class research with patients being provided access to innovative treatments through clinical trials that can mean the difference between life and death.

Research helps create a self-improving health system and is therefore a key component of the health reform agenda as it provides evidenced-based health strategies.

If we lose our high-level research capacity and intellectual property we will have to buy future health innovations from international competitors and suppliers of drugs and devices.

In outbreaks such as swine flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome or, in the context of the recent floods, Ross River fever, we will be slow to respond in testing developing vaccines. In addition, we will have to rely too heavily on overseas breakthroughs in diabetes, cancer and heart disease to be able to treat Australians with the latest drugs and treatments.

The ageing of the Australian population and its associated escalating chronic disease burden makes medical research important for our quality of life. But it can't just be turned on and off if we are to be a smart nation.

Yours fraternally,

Peter Beattie

Adjunct professor in bioscience and nanotechnology with the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and Institute for Molecular Bioscience.