Durbin visits National Institutes of Health

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today visited the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland along with a group of bipartisan senators – the largest gathering of senators in NIH's history. The senators met with Institute Directors to discuss NIH research on Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, mental illness, and infectious diseases like Zika and Ebola.

“Cutting the NIH’s budget by $7 billion, as this Administration has proposed, would cripple American innovation in medical research and delay new cures and treatments. Cuts to medical research would be a mistake that would be felt for generations to come.”

Senators in attendance in addition to Durbin included Roy Blunt (R-MO), Patty Murray (D-WA), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Susan Collins (R-ME), James Lankford (R-OK), John Kennedy (R-LA), and John Boozman (R-AR).

For the past two years, Congress has provided the NIH with $2 billion per year in funding increases.

In March, Senator Durbin reintroduced the American Cures Act, which would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Defense Health Program (DHP), and the Veterans Medical & Prosthetics Research Program.

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