With their efforts to win more government funding stymied in Washington, medical researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere are taking their lobbying campaign on the road -- and into the presidential campaign.

The doctors and scientists plan to raise the profile of their issue by advertising and organizing in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. It is the latest move in an effort to reverse an erosion of federal funding for medical research, and another example of interest groups using the presidential campaign to push their individual issues.

Despite intense lobbying, funding has not kept up with inflation since the National Institutes of Health's budget climbed to $27 billion in 2003, double the amount from five years earlier. Since then, the agency's budget has leveled off. …

A few candidates have already touched on the topic [of pledging support for science research]. In August, Democrat John Edwards, whose wife Elizabeth is fighting breast cancer, voiced support for increasing the budget for cancer research. This month, Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed doubling the NIH budget. Republican Fred Thompson's Web site mentions his support for promoting medical research, but it doesn't say whether that would mean more funding.

Still, raising the profile of biomedical research won't be easy in a campaign crowded with issues that include illegal immigration, high oil prices and national security. Just 2 percent of 1,500 adults surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation in August said they wanted to learn more about medical research.

Some say increases in funding would only help medical schools and research institutes fill the labs they built during the last round of increases, while others argue that if the goal is improving health care, the cash-strapped government should target any extra resources to research that helps doctors and patients choose the best treatments….

Many scientists resist studying the effectiveness of treatments because it involves number-crunching that isn't as rewarding as basic research. It could also invalidate lucrative procedures performed at their hospitals, said Shannon Brownlee, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer.

"What we need is research on what works, what doesn't and for whom. The NIH doesn't focus on that. It spends a pittance on that," Brownlee said. ...

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