Use the NIH to stop job-killers

Our nation’s medical research spending, primarily channeled through the National Institutes of Health, has been tremendously successful in focusing on diseases that cut short our lives, such as heart attacks. But what about the diseases that kill jobs?

Three of the four most common diseases in America — arthritis, low back pain and osteoporosis — don’t kill you directly. Instead, they weaken you into unemployment and dependency. Knee pain might seem like a minor nuisance to someone with a minor case (the ‘bum’ knee from a skiing accident or old high school sports injury), but for a person with chronic joint or back pain, sitting in a car for a daily commute might be painful, sitting at your desk for a full day’s work might not be possible and standing on your feet all day helping customers may be unthinkable.

{mosads}Seventy percent of work days lost to injury and illness are associated with musculoskeletal diseases. This is how disease turns someone who is willing and able to work into someone needing assistance from family and safety net programs.

Diseases that cause dependency are common and expensive: for example, musculoskeletal diseases affect one in three Americans and the direct costs associated with treatment exceed 5.7 percent of the GDP. But our medical research expenditures on these diseases are relatively small: the NIH spends less than 2 percent of its budget on musculoskeletal disease. The Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations bill from Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) now heading to the Senate does not directly address this costly disparity.

Advances that address diseases that cause dependency have been slow. Osteoarthritis is a good example. The only real “cure” is joint replacement: ripping out bone and cartilage and replacing it with metal and plastic. Unlike natural tissues, metal and plastic don’t heal on their own and eventually wear out, requiring a second, more dangerous surgery. A true cure for osteoarthritis is still years away.

Concentrating our efforts on the most deadly diseases is successful: the average American lives 30 years longer than in 1900. As our lives get longer and longer, though, we need to make sure that we are not only alive, but also able to support ourselves financially. Fail to do so and we risk spending our decades of life unable to work and dependent on others.

The simple solution is to increase our investments in medical research. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), former Speaker of the House of Representatives, recently made an argument for doubling the NIH budget. He noted that our medical research expenditures on Alzheimer’s disease (another disease that doesn’t kill directly) are less than 1 percent of what we spend in Medicaid and Medicare treating the condition. These cost estimates, however, don’t include the indirect costs of disability payments, or lost work days associated with families caring for Alzheimer’s patients.

In comparison, research and development budgets in the pharmaceutical industry often exceed 15 percent of revenues. Increases in our medical research budget that match or exceed inflation, as proposed in Blunt’s bill, will allow us to not only address the killers but also the job killers. As we continue to find cures for the diseases that threaten our lives, we can also find cures for the diseases that threaten our independence, productivity, and livelihoods.

Hernandez is an orthopaedics researcher and associate professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. He is a 2015 Public Voices Fellow of The Oped Project.