Voices

Leaders of the Federal Health Agencies

“CDC works 24/7 to protect the health of all Americans. Each of us depends on public health agencies to protect our food supply, guard against deadly infectious diseases, improve our chances of avoiding deadly — and costly — chronic diseases, and improve our quality of life.”

Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH
director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

“The estimate that has been put forward by an analysis would result in roughly 2,300 grants that we would not be able to award in FY13 that we otherwise would have expected to. That represents almost a quarter of our new and competing grants."

Francis Collins, MD, PhD
director, National Institutes of Health

“AHRQ’s relentless focus on making care safer has made measurable improvements in the quality of health care, for example, as seen in our support of work to reduce central line bloodstream infections, which thus far has resulted in almost 500 lives saved and more than $32 million in excess costs averted in a 2-year period."

Carolyn Clancy,MD
director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

“The nation’s well-being and global competitiveness depend, more than ever, on the steady stream of new ideas and the highly skilled science, technology, engineering and mathematical talent supported by the National Science Foundation and other federal science agencies."

Subra Suresh,MS, ScD
director, National Science Foundation

“FDA’s inspectors on the front lines of public health, its scientists and its medical professionals work tirelessly to protect Americans from potentially risky food and medical products.  Whether inspecting a facility that collects and processes human blood, ensuring that a life-saving medication is manufactured properly, or tracing the product that has caused an illness, FDA is there for the public."

Margaret A. Hamburg, MD
commissioner, Food and Drug Administration

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Patient, Researcher, Industry

Alex Silver’s 4-year-old son, Jackson, suffers from epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, a rare disorder in which a missing
protein, which would bind layers of skin together effectively, causes skin to separate from the body. EB is a debilitating and devastating genetic disorder that affects a child from birth. EB is extremely rare —approximately 25,000 people in theU.S. have EB.

“It’s incurable but doesn’t need to be incurable,” said Silver who, along with his wife, founded the Jackson Gabriel Silver Foundation. “In fact one of the fascinating things about EB is that if you look at the history of EB research, some of the great strides came through National Institutes of Health funding.” The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases helped foster key EB breakthroughs.

On multiple levels, Keith Yamamoto, PhD, worries about the effects of sequestration. As a researcher with experience in
policy and public attitudes toward science, he sees the big picture of potential effects. But as vice chancellor for research at the University of California, San Francisco, the effects on the ground are also easy to imagine.

The 13 full-time employees at Atlanta-based GeoVax Labs, Inc. are developing multiple vaccines centered on HIV/AIDS. Two of these are currently being tested in clinical trials: one as a preventive vaccine for uninfected individuals and the other as a therapeutic to lessen HIV-infected individuals’ need for drugs. From the therapies’ earliest days, GeoVax and its founders have worked hand-in-hand with government agencies.

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