The May 31 editions included splendid reporting of medical news and opinion from the faculty of the University of Chicago. The front page featured the research of Eve Van Cauter on the relationship between sleep and stress hormones, and the lead article in Perspective quoted 11 of our premier specialists, whose reputations are based not only on their patient-care skills but on their research achievements as well.
Yet nowhere in any of these encouraging descriptions of the fruits of biomedical research was there any mention, much less an explanation, of how the work is paid for. Tribune readers, as taxpayers, might like to know that the University of Chicago is home to a General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), a core facility that is almost fully supported by a $2.3 million annual grant from the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Van Cauter and many others conduct much of their human subjects research under GCRC auspices.
Although each investigator also has his or her own research support from the NIH, the pharmaceutical industry and other important sources, the GCRC can provide the following: substantial costs of hospitalizing healthy volunteers, as well as ill research subjects; the specialized nursing and technical support demanded by the exacting nature of research protocols; extensive laboratory and other testing; and many less obvious necessities, such as the statistical expertise needed for designing studies and the valid interpretation of the results.
The GCRC is also the locus for training young clinical investigators whose contributions to the future advancement of medical science will be reported into the next century. Without such a facility, many investigators simply could not carry out the kind of wonderful research that merits banner coverage in the Tribune.
