Choosing biomedical research in Maine

It’s not easy to set a budget. Budgets are about choices. Some of the hardest budget choices involve choosing between short-term needs and long-term investments.

For example, you might need a new car to take you to work, but you also need to set aside money for retirement. If you find year after year that your family is just meeting immediate needs and not setting anything aside for the long term, then there is trouble ahead. On the other hand, if your family is not meeting its immediate needs, then that’s trouble too.

The smartest budget choices are those which meet both immediate and long-term needs. An example might be an investment in continuing education for yourself. This is an expenditure which will pay itself back in the short term with a better job, and in the longer term with a higher lifetime income. When it comes to budgets, investments which meet immediate and long-term needs at once are the closest thing you can get to “no-brainer” choices.

This year in the Legislature our elected officials are struggling with long and short term budget choices. Finances are very tight. There are many excellent proposals to choose from in health, education, human services and economic development. There are no automatic answers. But looking at the mix as a whole, those programs which promise to meet both immediate needs and long-term strategic objectives at the same time rise naturally to the top of the priority list.

One such program is biomedical research. Last year the state of Maine provided $10 million to its nonprofit biomedical laboratories. We turned around and parlayed the state funds to help attract more than $50 million in federal and private grants, and to create 175 to 200 new permanent, high-paying jobs in the next five years. This provides a short-term shot in the arm to Maine’s sluggish economy, and at the same time builds a sector which fits the state’s long-term economic strategy. These jobs pay manufacturing-level wages, are available to workers in 11 of Maine’s 16 counties, and do not rise and fall with the business cycle.

Today Maine has 1,400 employees working at our five nonprofit laboratories producing world-class research. They are at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Scarborough, the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove, and the Foundation for Blood Research in Scarborough. We have grown rapidly in the last five years, and with the new federal interest in and support for genetic research, we can grow even more rapidly in the future.

But we need state support to build the first-class facilities and to attract the first-class researchers who will continue to bring in the federal grants. If the state of Maine continues its current commitment in the coming biennium, we as a group plan to create 250 new permanent jobs in the coming seven years, and attract over $170 million in federal and private investment. We can do this because the state money will enable The Jackson Laboratory, the Foundation for Blood Research, and the University of New England, to construct major new facilities. At the same time, the Maine Medical Center Research Institute and Mount Desert Biological Laboratory will be able to recruit new world-class, year-round research teams.

With continuing state support, biomedical research can be a major economic underpinning of Maine’s economy in the 21st century. That makes sense in the long term. It can also help Maine add new jobs during the current slowdown. That makes sense in the short term. For both of these reasons, biomedical research is a smart state budget choice.

This commentary was written by Tish Tanski of The Jackson Laboratory, Steve Shannon of the University of New England, Jane Sheehan of the Foundation for Blood Research, EJ Lovett of the Maine Medical Center Research Institute and John Forrest of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. All are members of the Maine Biomedical Coalition.