New Report: NIH Spends Only 3% on AIDS Cure Research

July 13, 2010

By Susan Phillips

The Obama Administration is expected to announce a new plan to address the country's H-I-V and AIDS epidemic on Tuesday. [7/13/10] Activists based in Philadelphia say the government is not spending enough money on researching a cure for the disease. Whyy's Susan Phillips reports.

The AIDS Policy Project released a report that shows a large disparity between the money spent on treatment and vaccine research, as opposed to money spent on finding a cure. Sixty-million dollars or just 3 percent of the AIDS research money allocated by the National Institutes of Health goes towards a cure.

Katie Krauss is executive director of the organization. Krauss says she was surprised by her findings.

"I thought it was going to be a much closer call. I thought there was going to be a lot more money spent on Aids cure research than we found. I thought that it was going to be 20 percent, and we would have said that wouldnt be enough. But 3 percent was really shocking."

Krauss wants N-I-H to quadruple its funding to $240 million dollars. She says cure researchers are demoralized. But she says there are hopeful signs in the field of stem cell and gene therapy that could indicate breakthroughs. The National Institutes of Health did not return calls for comment. I'm Susan Phillips, Whyy news.