The unprecedented recent turmoil in the world financial markets is hard to comprehend from many angles, not least of which is the amount of money lost or proposed as being needed to ameliorate the crisis. The US government has now committed over $700 billion to ease the financial crisis. Among other effects, this is likely to have consequences on the US government's capacity to fund 'business as usual' in the years ahead.

Even before the US Congress passed the bailout bill, worries about the financial ability of the US government were realized in a US Senate vote to freeze all government spending except for defense and security purposes. But now the $700 billon bailout is law—and follows on the heels of $85 billion to support the beleaguered insurance company AIG and $200 billion for the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together will raise the US debt ceiling to approximately $11.3 trillion. Remarkably, it is not even clear if the $700 billon amount will be enough to fix the underlying problem as the financial crisis spreads globally. The ultimate cost to the US and other governments is also not clear.

To put the scale of the possible financial market bailout into perspective, $700 billion is roughly 3.4 times the 2008 budget of the European Union. Perhaps closer to home for readers of Nature Immunology, $700 billion dollars is 24 times the 2008 budget of the entire National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Closely watched in the biomedical community is the annual budget of the NIH. The 2009 budget proposed by the Bush administration was already set to stall biomedical research with its zero increase. But now that the US government and taxpayers will be burdened with the consequences of the financial market debacle, hope that a new administration will have the means to substantially increase NIH funding may fade.

Even before the present financial crisis, ineffective political lobbying and disengagement of the public on the importance of biomedical research may have contributed to the present state of anemic science funding. Now that combination may join forces with a debt of at least $11.3 trillion to form what could become a prolonged stalemate for government-supported biomedical research.

We suggest that the biomedical research community take a proactive stance against this problem: those who have the ability and knowledge to influence politicians and the public to invest in scientific research must make every effort to be heard loud and clear to ensure the continued advance of the present amount of scientific research, at the very least.