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The National Eye Institute Should be Funded at $711 Million in FY2004

The National Alliance for Eye and Vision Research (NAEVR), on behalf of the eye and vision research community, requests that funding for the National Eye Institute (NEI) be increased to $711 million for fiscal year 2004 in order to complete the promised doubling of its budget and bring it into proportion with the other Institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), so that NEI may continue to support important research that promises to prevent vision loss and cure some forms of blindness and vision impairment among the 14 million visually-disabled Americans, improving their lives and reducing the economic burden these conditions create.

  • Federal funding for eye and vision research has significantly lagged behind funding for other types of health research.

While Congress doubled the budget of the NIH between 1998 and 2003, the NEI failed to receive a proportionate doubling in its research budget for the same time period. Prior to 1998, the annual budgetary increases for the NEI were two- to three-fold lower than annual budgetary increases appropriated for the NIH.

  • Research underway by NEI-funded scientists promises not only to slow the progression of vision loss, but also to actually restore vision to some individuals who are already blind.

New gene therapies will likely be used to correct or treat genetic forms of neurodegenerative eye diseases and rare ocular cancer. Scientists are now close to clinical trials for gene therapy to treat a condition called Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), which is a rapid retinal degeneration that blinds infants in the first year of life. Gene replacement therapy experiments in dogs with LCA have found that vision can be safely restored, long-term, with a single treatment. People suffering from diabetic retinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, and other kinds of ocular diseases may literally have vision restored to their lives as the research investment facilitates development of new treatments.

  • The annual economic burden of vision-related disabilities is tremendous. In 1995, the annual cost to the United States government created by the less than 1 million blind individuals at that time was $38.4 billion. Adjusted for a modest 2.5% annual cost of inflation, that figure today approaches $50 billion.

This estimate only accounts for costs associated with Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid payments, and estimated tax losses to the government, but does not include economic considerations such as costs of Federal- and State-mandated programs for the blind, costs of secondary illness or injury associated with blindness, and loss of revenue to various industries whose products require adequate visual performance.

  • Vision impairment: A National Disability with High Economic Burden and Significant Unmet Medical Need. In the United States, as many as 14 million Americans suffer from significant vision impairment, 3 million have low vision, and more than 1 million are legally blind.

Low vision is a condition in which visual performance cannot be corrected or improved with prescription glasses, contact lenses, medicine, or surgery. As a result, low vision leads to an inability to adequately perform everyday tasks.

  • The number of Americans with vision impairment and blindness is growing exponentially. Within the next 25 years, the number of people with AMD and other major diseases leading to blindness will double - and our nation will likely have more than 50 million Americans with significant vision loss or blindness.

Today, 6 million people in the United States over the age of 50 have vision loss caused by AMD. One out of every two people over age 85 have AMD, and the population of individuals over age 85 is the most rapidly growing segment of the population. Currently, only one FDA-approved treatment is available for individuals with the most severe form of AMD, and this treatment benefits less than 5% of AMD patients.

With such promising ongoing research and with new therapies on the horizon that could transform the lives of millions of Americans, increasing the funding for eye and vision research would be a very wise investment in the public well-being at this time. Further, increasing such funding to a level of parity with NIH funding as a whole is a matter of fundamental fairness.

The eye and vision research community urges you to strongly support a total FY 2004 NEI funding amount of $711 million so that this important eye and vision research can continue.

Eye and Vision Breakthroughs:
Keep The Research Drive Alive!
www.eyeresearch.org