New federal ALS funding (FY2026) + what it supports

2:05:03here uh just given Congress actually just approved new funding for this uh this month is related to uh federal funding uh for ALS research. So for those who might not be super familiar with like how who pays for fundamental science and like how do we actually get the money to do a lot of this stuff, you know, there are variety of sources, but the federal government has been a huge funer of uh fundamental science research since the constitution. Let me I don't know if you know this. Did you know this in the constitution the word science is used and I think like in the in the in article one which

2:05:45is establishing the powers of the legislative branch >> uh I think it's section 8 clause 8 is that uh they congress must uh you know basically promote the investment and you know uh work in the sciences and related arts. >> Wow. And like the word science is an article one of the constitution. >> That's really cool. That's got to be either Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. >> One of those two. >> 100%. And and so it's it is a part of the ethos of >> That's cool. >> of even the founding document for our our nation. And so >> it's a great document by the way. >> It is a they were so ahead of

2:06:26>> time. Yeah. The Constitution is a amazing document. >> It's quite nice. If you have not read it, I encourage you because we now need to understand it now more than ever. Yeah, >> but on February 3rd of this year, Congress approved new ALS funding for the fiscal year of 2026. So that means for the the year that we're in, fiscal year of 2026. Every year, all these federal agencies and projects, they need to go, they need to be appropriated new funding uh by Congress. This is what Congress is always fighting about, among other things, is where should money be allocated. So for fiscal year 2026, meaning next year they're going to have to, you know, all of the folks who are supporting and doing the nonprofit work

2:07:07to, you know, make sure Congress does continue to appropriate money are consistently advocating for this to be true. This year was a total of $315 million, which is the highest level of funding ever for ALS research. It's a lot of money. Um, and I just briefly want to break down what the different categories of where this is going is. So $90 million is going for accelerating access to critical therapies for ALS. It's sort of called ACT for ALS at the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. Uh which is a $15 million increase over fiscal year 2025. They're going to do $30 million for advanced research projects agency for health. This is like ARPA. It's like DARPA but for health. Um

2:07:49and so this is net new funding. >> This $30 million is net new that didn't exist previously. $145 million for NIH general ALS research, not specific to critical therapies, which is a sort of a subsidiary under NIH. Uh $40 million for uh Department of Defense uh ALS research through their directed medical research programs. And then $10 million for uh the center for dis uh disease control, CDC and prevention of national ALS registry. Um so you know this funding is super important to generate outcomes. It is not just private pharmaceutical companies and all

2:08:31these things that are kind of working in these areas especially in areas that are not perceived to be >> financially lucrative. My like my dad works you know used to work in neglected like neglected diseases. So this is a lot of things that have impact you know the you know subsaran African population etc. There is no market yeah for lemania or African seedling sickness etc etc and so it is it can be difficult to actually get the funding to do this work that does impact. So kudos to Congress for being able to not only continue funding, ALS research, but increasing it and I think applying it in ways that are going to be impactful and again we are seeing

2:09:12the results of because through you know NIH etc. they give grants out to universities and research labs and so this money flows through the system um in order to reach the experts like the folks we just talked about in the previous story. >> Yeah. Yeah. Incredibly important work. Um the US has always been at the forefront. Not always, but since post-war, we have been at the forefront of scientific research because our government has used our incredible economy to bankroll amazing scientific research. And that shouldn't stop. >> It It should not. It's incredibly important. We had a fantastic big chunky over two hours. I think we're

2:09:55just over two hours episode. >> We got a little excited. We had some pretty good stories. the I mean we started with the dream engineering which I still want to follow up on that was out of Northwestern in the neuroscience of consciousness. We followed up that up with understanding measuring protons uh