washington

Kennedy: seeking boost for research. Credit: AP

Senator Edward Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts), a long-time supporter of medical research funding, last week received the backing of advocates of biomedical research for a bill that would direct billions of dollars raised from tobacco companies to US biomedical research.

At a press conference in Washington DC last Friday (23 January), almost a hundred medical research societies endorsed the Kennedy bill, which would levy a tax of $1.50 on every packet of cigarettes.

Just under 43 cents of that would be used to support biomedical and other research at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies.

Kennedy estimates that research would receive an extra $8 to $10 billion each year under his bill, and says that such sums would “bring major dividends in the battle against disease”. Donald Coffey, professor of urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and president of the American Association for Cancer Research, said that the bill funded research “at a level consistent with devastation of the cancer caused by tobacco use”.

The bill is one of four to be introduced in the Senate as starting points for legislation codifying a $368.5 billion settlement with the tobacco industry.