Taxpayer advocacy group says Cures Bill is the righ...( The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA)...)

Taxpayer advocacy group says Cures Bill is the right medicine

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), a national coalition of patient groups, libraries, and public interest organizations, today praised the research access provision of legislation introduced to establish the American Center for Cures within the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Introduced on December 7th by Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Thad Cochran (R-MS), the bipartisan Cures Bill would expedite development of new therapies and cures for life-threatening diseases. Among the requirements of the bill is the establishment of free public access to articles stemming from research funded by agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), including NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

"The Cures Bill is exactly the medicine that's needed," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and a leader of the ATA. "It goes right to the heart of the case for unfettered access to publicly funded research. Senators Lieberman and Cochran took a close look at how best to speed development of treatments for diseases. Among their conclusions is that it's time we ensure the research we're already conducting is available to all potential users."

Pat Furlong, executive director of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy and an ATA member, was also pleased with the bill. "It recognizes how important the sharing of information is to speeding research and translating new knowledge into cures," said Furlong. "In the age of the Internet, it makes no sense for the results of taxpayer-funded research to be hidden away."

The bill calls for DHHS-funded research to be made available in NIH's popular PubMed Central online digital archive within four months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The NIH already has a policy that asks its investigators to deposit their manuscripts in PubMed Central, but the policy
'"/>

Contact: Jennifer Heffelfinger
jennifer@arl.org
202-296-2296
SPARC
9-Dec-2005

Page: 1 2
Related biology news :

1. Taxpayer Alliance applauds congressional mandate for NIH public access
2. Taxpayer Alliance supports senate bill broadening access to federal research
3. NIH joined by advocacy groups to fund research on autism susceptibility genes
4. Amgens decision to block reinstatement of GDNF is faulted by a leading Parkinsons advocacy group
5. Neurons for numerosity: Parietal neurons sum up individual items in a group
6. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Geisinger launch new environmental research group
7. Research group gets $7 million to pursue new antibiotic agents
8. Gene study shows three distinct groups of chimpanzees
9. No sign that ethnic groups genes cause diabetes, international research team says
10. Fisheries group calls for science-based approach to address climate impacts
11. 20 of worlds 162 grouper species threatened with extinction

Post Your Comments: