retirement.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) will not seek another term.
biomedical research community will lose one of its long-time champions with the upcoming retirement of Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA). Saturday, Harkin announced he would not seek a sixth term in November 2014, ending a 40-year career in Congress.
Harkin, 73, is currently chairman of the Senate committee that sets funding levels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also chairs the committee that oversees federal policies on health, education and labor. Harkin has teamed up with his then counterpart Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, to earn a doubling of the 1998 NIH budget in 03. He also led an effort to Specter and include $ 10.4 billion for NIH in the packet 09 stimulus.
"Harkin obviously has been a consistent and very good champion for NIH and for medical research. So his decision not to run again is a huge loss," said Ann Bonham, Scientific Director Association of American Medical colleges in Washington, DC "for years, he and Specter essentially traded the championship to and fro. They both looked after very deeply about NIH and made it a priority regardless of the funding picture, "says Jennifer Zeitzer, legislative analyst with the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
With Specter, Harkin also sponsored legislation in the 00s that have expanded federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells. In 1992, he helped create a research program for breast cancer at the Ministry of Defence, doubling the funding for research for the disease.
Harkin was elected to the House of Representatives in 1974 and won a Senate seat in 1984. Everything Harkin has satisfied the scientists, however. In the 190s, Harkin has pushed Congress to create an NIH office for alternative medicine, citing its own success in taking bee pollen for allergies. The office attracted controversy scientists who said it funded non-scientific studies of marginal medical treatments. In 1998, Congress raised the office center and appointed a new NIH director under which the center was less vague. But the $ 128 million National Center for Complementary Medicine and alternative continues to annoy some observers of the NIH.
Harkin's departure at the end of 2014 will leave a vacancy for the unofficial title of chief booster NIH, Zeitzer said. A candidate is Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who chairs the full appropriations committee. Although this position will keep him busy, Zeitzer predicted that the NIH, located in the state of Mikulski, "will be a priority for her."
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