WASHINGTON, D.C.: Researchers have found that while the number of scientists has increased more than nine-fold since 1965 and the National Institutes of Health’s budget has increased four-fold, the number of new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration has only increased a little more than two-fold. Meanwhile, life expectancy gains have remained constant, at roughly two months per year.
“The idea of public support for biomedical research is to make lives better. But there is increasing friction in the system,” says co-author Arturo Casadevall, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School. “We are spending more money now just to get the same results we always have, and this is going to keep happening if we don’t fix things.”