The Value of Legislative Appropriations
by Eaton E. (Ed) Lattman
Fall 2010

Over the past three years, through the wonderful professionalism of Tara Ellis and Jane Griffin, HWI has received three large Department of Defense Awards through legislative appropriations (colloquially called earmarks).

• Tim Umland and Wayne Schultz have received a three-year contract for $2.9 million for a study of virus transfer.  The contracting entity is DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency), Department of Defense. They are in the second year of that award.

• Joe Luft and Eddie Snell have received a similar award for $2.8 million for a project aimed at reducing traumatic brain and lung damage. This project just started in August 2010.

• Andy Gulick, with a team of other HWI scientists, has also received $1.7M over 3 years for a project entitled Identification of New Drug Targets in Multi-Drug Resistant Bacterial Infections. This award is managed through a different Department of Defense office, TATRC ( Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center). The proposal phase is well under way and we hope to have everything finalized and realize the funding sometime in mid-2011.

These awards would not have been possible without the support of Senators Gillibrand and Schumer, and without the leadership of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Congressman Brian Higgins and Congressman Chris Lee.

Earmarks are generally defined as legislative actions that direct spending to a specific recipient. They are inserted into laws at the request of one or more lawmakers.  The awards listed above are enormously valuable to us, since they represent a new pathway for the initiation of projects.  Nevertheless, earmarks are often criticized examples of wasteful spending that benefit special interests.  Why should Hauptman-Woodward seek funds from such a controversial source?

The NIH review process is continuingly (and in my mind justifiably) criticized for discriminating against high-risk, high-reward projects, and against new projects that lack a substantial base of preliminary data.  The congressional authorization system represents a parallel track for funding research projects that are not, for one reason or another, yet in the NIH slot.  

As opposed to the rather monolithic European approach, one of the great virtues of the U.S. system of supporting research is the diversity of sources of funding: federal peer review, national laboratories, private foundations, internal funding from universities, and others.  Congressional authorizations add another useful component to this varied system.  But it is agreed that none of these mechanisms should be exempt from scrutiny of their effectiveness.  
In fact the congressional staffs have a well-articulated protocol for selecting projects for support from among the very large number submitted for their consideration.  There is a significant application and presentation process which precedes their consideration and continues throughout the year while decisions on awards are being made. Among their criteria is congruence with the research missions of agencies to which the earmarks will be assigned. For example, traumatic brain and lung injuries commonly arise from blasts and are of significant interest to the military. Luft and Snell provide new insights into how this problem can be approached.

Blast induces oxidative stress, a degenerative condition caused by the formation of free radicals, which results in cellular degradation and subsequent tissue damage. The lungs also are susceptible to a second form of oxidative stress caused by exposure to a number of battlefield hazards.  The naturally occurring protein superoxide dismutase plays an important role in controlling free radicals, and the project explores how it might be deployed in the kinds of trauma mentioned above.