Introduction
Federal funding for the medical sector has been realized to affect the way in which medical laboratories operate. A consideration of the budget that was proposed by the federal government for the 2007 fiscal year realized the omission of funding that was supposed to be increased for agencies that coordinate medical research. According to Levin (2006), the cost of medical provisions has been realized to increase and a further reduction in funding is thus expressed as a setback to the medical sector especially in the area of medical research.
The reduction in funding in the period (2007) was actually the first to be realized in the last three decades. This was at the same time realized at a time when medical research was suffering from underfunding. The number of institutions that had been reported to suffer from this included almost thirty institutes together with thousands of institutions that had been based for medical researchers. The lack of funds had been a clear phenomenon in even federal institutions that operate on a centralized national basis. Realized reduction of budget allocation to medical research had been a trend in even earlier years. The article actually reported that increments in the allocation of funds to research in prior years had been associated with a general increment in the overall federal budget and that had been in the initial years of the last decade. Medical research institutions were thus reported to heavily depend on foreign funding which was never a guarantee. Research has therefore been faced with a problem of underfunding over the past years following the trend that was adopted in the period around the year 2006 (Levin, 2006).
Need for Research
Even though research in the medical field has been characterized by a substantial level of underfunding, its essence in the medical sector still remains vital with a number of diseases and complications whose diagnosis and treatment still remain unknown. Autism is one of such complications for which comprehensive research is still a necessity. The complication which is associated with neurodevelopment problems is, for instance, reported to be just currently diagnosed on the ground of an individual’s behavior with no particular medical test already realized. Research activities are also being focused on determining the actual causes of the disorder as well as the appropriate treatment (Flusberg & Joseph, 2003).
While the controversy over the cuts on funding for medical research may be raised in debates, the important approach that should be taken ought to be an understanding of the essence of medical research and the reason why it should be carried out. Unlike other disciplines such as mathematics in which principles are well defined and apply uniformly no matter the location of an expert, medical concepts vary from patient to patient with the need to establish a different approach for every situation. Established practices such as treatments are also supposed to be monitored to ensure that the responses that patients develop with respect to the treatments are detected in case of any negative change (Patric & Sygma, n.d.).
Conclusion
The nature of the medical profession which is characterized by discreteness in cases that are being handled about patients requires a wide knowledge of the field. This is the only option to adequate diagnosis and treatment of the numerous complications that are realized. Efforts to develop medical solutions through research are however being compromised by lack of funds in research institutions following reduced funding from the federal budget. Political and even economic decisions that are made outside medical fields thus affect the provision of medical care.
References
Flusberg, H & Joseph, R. (2003). Identifying neurocognitive phenotypes in autism. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 358, pp. 303-314.
Levin, S. (2006). Flat funding hurts medical research. Post Gazette. Web.
Patric, R & Sygma, C. (n.d.). Ethics and Medical Research. Ethics Manual. Web.