University Times

Of the $11 billion that Pennsylvania is ex- pected to receive as its share of the national settlement with tobacco companies, Gov. Ridge has proposed that 10 percent should fund medical research in Pennsylvania.

That's not enough, according to Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

At a Feb. 18 hearing sponsored by the state House appropriations committee in the William Pitt Union Assembly Room, Herberman argued that 25 percent of the state's tobacco settlement money should go toward research on cancer and other tobacco-related illnesses.

The governor's plan "is completely silent about the problem of cancer or any other tobacco-related disease," Herberman testified. "We also believe that the proposed total allocation for research is too low and the plan too unfocused to be expected to have any real impact."

Herberman noted that Ridge's plan "dedicates only 10 percent of the settlement monies to 'broad-based research' covering a wide array of types of basic, clinical, behavioral, public health, health services and epidemiologic research into virtually any disease or topic related to human health or health care management. Without a concentrated effort, we fear that after 25 years Pennsylvania will have little to show in terms of significant progress against cancer or other tobacco-related diseases."

Asked where he'd recommend getting the other 15 percent of the total 25 percent, Herberman suggested the following:

* Five percent would become available after three years, once Ridge's proposed venture capital fund for new health care companies is up and running.

* Researchers should receive two-thirds of the 15 percent allocation that Ridge has proposed for tobacco prevention and cessation programs. The overall tobacco settlement agreement already includes $1.45 billion for a national public education fund and another $250 million for a teen smoking foundation. Herberman said that "considerably more effort needs to be devoted to research to find better and more effective ways to prevent tobacco use." Current prevention and cessation efforts involve "a lot of waste" and many aren't effective, he said.

But another speaker, Pennsylvania Medical Society President-Elect Carol E. Rose, said the society believes that far more than Ridge's proposed 15 percent of the settlement money should be allocated to tobacco prevention and cessation programs — "the true front line of health care where the battles are fought in the trenches," she said.

Rose, a physician in the UPMC anesthesiology department, cited a New York Times story reporting that nearly 30 percent of high school students use tobacco and that 13 percent of students aged 11-13 had used some form of tobacco.

She added that the state medical society "would certainly not object" to allocating more than 10 percent of the settlement money to health research.

Rose urged legislators to impose oversight of research funding. She suggested that the state's Department of Health be given this responsibility.

Herberman disagreed, saying: "Rather than developing a new and expensive process for peer review of biomedical research, we propose that the allocation be directly linked to the excellent, long-established peer review system of the National Institutes of Health.

"Specifically," Herberman continued, "we recommend that the distribution of funds be in proportion to each institution's level of NIH funding for cancer and other tobacco-related diseases."

Pennsylvania is the only state with two universities in the top 10 (among 124 U.S. medical schools) in NIH funding. Pitt's medical school ranks 10th. Penn's ranks 4th.

Herberman pointed out that, each year, 30,000 Pennsylvanians die from cancer and more than 75,000 are newly diagnosed with cancer. Nearly 50 percent of cancers are tobacco-related, he said.

— Bruce Steele