Federal budget cuts proposed by House Republicans could affect the work of research institutions like Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The proposal calls for eliminating the $1 billion that the Obama administration wants to add to the National Institute of Health's $31 billion budget and slashing the organization's current appropriation by $2.5 billion.

The Fiscal Times reports that the cuts could harm job-creating innovation, given that nearly one in five important medical advances approved by the FDA between 1990 and 20078 was invented in a federally-funded lab and those inventions are now generating in excess of $100 billion a year in sales for drug and biotech firms -- a sixth of the total revenue for the entire pharma industry. "This will undercut U.S. competitiveness in biomedical research in a very big way," Woolley said. "Other countries have learned from the U.S. that putting resources behind biomedical research will lead not only to better health outcomes but economic growth." VUMC consistently ranks among the top schools in the country for NIH research funding.