In private conversations across the country this holiday break, pediatricians are buttonholing their congressmen and making a heart-felt plea: Save the National Children's Study.
This is the latest attempt to rescue the most important study of children's health and the environment in the United States.
Tracking 100,000 children
Hundreds of scientists have helped plan the project since 2000. The scope is enormous: Researchers are set to track 100,000 children from birth to age 21, collecting genetic material and blood samples and recording kids' exposure to everything from pesticides to chemicals and air pollution. Enrollment activities were scheduled to begin in 2007.
But earlier this year, President Bush's proposed budget called for terminating the $2.7 billion study instead of allocating the $69 million requested for fiscal 2007. "The issue is really an issue of prioritization" of limited research funds, Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, told a Senate hearing in May.
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The administration's move provoked an outcry and the House and Senate appropriations committees responded by affirming strong support. But neither committee set aside new funding for the National Children's Study, leaving the project's future in limbo.
"We're preparing to respond to both directives — to shut down the study if Congress accepts the president's budget or to continue it if more money can be found," said Dr. Peter Scheidt, the project's director.
Now a new push is on to convince the new, Democratic-controlled Congress that the study needs to go forward.
"To pull back now, after so much work has already been done, would deliver a chilling message that our children's health simply isn't a high priority for this nation," said Dr. David Schonfeld, who sits on the study's federal advisory committee.
"Yes, this project represents a major investment, but it's an investment that promises to yield great dividends in the future," added Schonfeld, who directs the division of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
The payoff will come from understanding how children's physical and social environments — from the water they drink to the homes they live in and the video games they play — interact with their genetic makeups and affect the onset of disease.
Work is "critical"
With chronic conditions such as asthma, autism, diabetes and obesity on the rise in youngsters and definitive scientific explanations lacking, "this work is absolutely critical," said Dr. Edward Clark, chairman of the department of pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Salt Lake City is one of seven initial sites chosen for the project.
Even a 1 percent reduction in the incidence of chronic diseases could yield enormous benefits — as much as $6 billion a year, according to some estimates, recouping the study costs many times over.
But those returns lie 10 to 30 years or more down the road, while Congress faces enormous current budget pressures, aggravated by the cost of the war in Iraq and mounting deficits.
Given the many things on Democrats' 2007 health-care agenda — restoring funding for stem-cell research, giving the government the ability to negotiate prices for drugs purchased through Medicare and expanding health insurance coverage for children — renewed financial support for the children's study can't be taken for granted.
