NIEHS, and Kucinich action 'lite'

The House Subcommittee on Domestic Policy headed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich held a hearing on recent developments at National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. This is due to events from a change in management for the group which was run by David A Schwartz as of April ’05. The changes had damaged the reputation of NIEHS. These reforms failed to continue “the mission of the agency to understand and prevent environmentally mediated diseases.” They chose to forgo issues of financial mismanagement and instead focus on the direct priority shifts. The concern is that because of the shift in resources to clinical studies, which can be carried out elsewhere, and focusing on discoveries for treating diseases the patient is already afflicted with, they would no longer address the pioneering research in disease prevention for which they had been so well known.

The failure of the new management to maintain the publication Environmental Health Perspectives, as well as their issues in other languages, like Spanish and Chinese has serious consequences in information availability. We value journals and publications in science because they help productivity, and interaction by researchers, and further cultivate the work to come. It is one of the major themes I’ve seen; sharing, funding, and deep-reasoned thinking are huge in science. EHP and similar practices were “strategies for effective communication of critical environmental health information to those who need it most.”

In deep-reasoned thinking, the neglect of important efforts like National Toxicology Program (NTP), new chemical studies, and further research in child related environmental health research, are indicative of a greater malaise in these systems. NTP for example is an “interagency program that assesses chemicals for health effects.” These were strong programs that are swiftly deteriorating due to lack of managerial support and funding.

Again, as is the case throughout scientific research, development, dispersal and education (among most other aspects) the issue of funding is absolute. Without proper funding, the projects that need to completed can’t, and if funding isn’t distributed effectively, it can be wasted in trivial projects and redundant research. The building of a clinical center when, in that neighborhood there are two excellent centers available, is an example of waste. Neglect in toxicology in particular, may be due in part to disinterest on Schwartz’s part, regarding the whole operation, it may be hat he saw “NTP as an inconvenient annoyance rather than an integral part of his job.” The quantitative evidence of this neglect, is a reduction in chemicals studied from ten, to just four.

Some activities robbed of support and funding include Centers of Excellence in Children’s Environmental Health Research, and The National Children’s Study, These worked to try to examine how “race, economics and behavior effect children’s health", and an ambitious study “that will follow 100,000 children from before birth to age 21, studying the effects of environmental factors.

Long term research is huge in science, and so failure for any reason to continue, severely damages further efforts. We should have learned, by now, that you can’t short change research into disease, just like you can’t count on the same drugs to treat the same infections for decades. There needs to be balance for success in any field, in this case part of that balance is resource management, and maintaining a stable platform. Scientific pioneers can benefit from maintaining relationships to other scientists, through these intrinsic means of communication, and through the trust of a small group of leaders, in direct management and in supervision to make sure that progress continues. Kucinich and the HSDP are trying to sustain a usable amount of research, and clinical study.

It is not known exactly what Schwartz, the man likely most responsible will do. It is not known whether he will remain part of the system or not, thankfully EHP will be restored as a vehicle for communication once again, .Most fundamentally they return the “Mission of NIEHS is to support research to define their ole of environmental agents in the initiation and progression of human disease.” Disease prevention is a top notch goal, because it is in prevention that you can most directly avail. If people don’t get sick because of successs in prevention; if you know how to diagnose an environmental problem and fix it before it escalates, you can more easily aid their health.
Seems to me Kucinich is pretty active compared to most other politicians.