NY Funds earmarked for spinal cord injury being diverted again~

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http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Detour-likely-for-research-funds-1039445.php
Detour likely for research funds Money intended for spinal injuries may be used to plug budget gap

By ERIC ANDERSON Business Editor Published 12:40 a.m., Thursday, March 3, 2011

ALBANY -- For the second consecutive year, funds collected from a surcharge on moving violation traffic fines and earmarked for spinal cord research may instead be used to close the state's budget gap.

"It's very disturbing to us what they're doing to this program," said Paul Richter, who's scheduled to testify Thursday afternoon at a joint legislative hearing on the proposed state budget. "It's self-sustaining, based on a surcharge. Most of the people who receive spinal cord injuries are hurt in auto or motorcycle accidents."

Richter, a retired state trooper, was paralyzed when he was shot while on duty in 1973 during a traffic stop. In 1998, he pushed for the New York State Spinal Cord Injury Research Bill that created the dedicated research fund, working with Terry O'Neill, a public affairs consultant and director of Constantine Institute Inc., to get it passed.

"Our campaign was nothing short of a miracle here in Albany," O'Neill recalled Wednesday. "The bill was introduced in April and Gov. George Pataki signed it in July."

Since then it has provided about $60 million to fund advanced medical research statewide.

Among the recipients is New York State Neural Stem Cell Institute in East Greenbush.

Until last year, grants from the fund covered about 20 percent to 30 percent of the institute's activities. Its director, Sally Temple, says researchers have made significant progress on at least two potential therapies, for spinal cord injuries and age-related macular degeneration, an eye disease that she said affects one in five people older than 70.

"I am writing grants night and day, at every opportunity," Temple said, as she seeks to replace some of the lost funding.

And she's losing researchers. She estimates about six will be leaving and not be replaced.

The state funding helps attract additional money from federal and private sources, proponents say.

Some drugs that have grown out of spinal cord research have found uses elsewhere, O'Neill said. He said a drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January and marketed by Acorda Therapeutics in Hawthorne has been effective in helping patients with multiple sclerosis walk.

"This is a byproduct of the search for a cure for spinal cord paralysis," he said.

Temple, meanwhile, said the funding has supported the discoveries that are building the state's biotech and biomedical industry. But the 2008 winner of a MacArthur Foundation "genius award" worries the uncertain funding could discourage future scientists.

"The awful thing -- young people are not going into science research," she said. "It becomes hard to raise a family when you can't be sure of a paycheck."