Arlen Specter: A retrospective

Former United States Senator Arlen Specter, for many years one of the nation’s most passionate and effective advocates for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), died at home in Philadelphia of a fulminant B-cell lymphoma on October 14, 2012, at age 82.

Senator Arlen Specter.

Famed as a student debater, trained as a lawyer, introduced to politics as a Philadelphia prosecutor, elected to the US Senate, and brought to national prominence as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter’s interests were hardly confined to science and health. However, his long-standing assignment to the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee was essential to NIH’s favorable budgetary fortunes, especially during the many years in which he was either the chairman or the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee.

Part of Specter’s effectiveness in the Senate can be attributed to the unusual fluidity of his place in the political spectrum. He entered local Pennsylvania politics as a Democrat, then shifted to the Republican party long before running successfully for Senator in 1980. He was viewed as liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal matters, knowledgeable and tough on judicial questions. His Senate career ended when he switched back to the Democratic column in 2009 to avoid an almost certain loss to a Tea Party candidate in the Republican primary. (He then lost the Democratic primary to an opponent who, in turn, was defeated by the original Republican challenger.)

Specter's alterations in party affiliation were consistent with a political persona driven not only by an instinct for survival but also by dogged commitments to judicial, scientific, fiscal, and diplomatic policies that did not align well overall with either party’s platform. In a sense, he was a party of one.

In this centrist mode, Specter did not hesitate to reach across the aisle to form a strong partnership with Tom Harkin of Iowa, his Democratic counterpart on NIH’s Appropriations Subcommittee, a cordial relationship that many of us remember warmly. Together, and with the similar partnership of their equivalents [John Porter (R-IL) and David Obey (D-WI)] on the corresponding House subcommittee, they committed Congress to a series of five annual 15% increases in the NIH budget, bringing it from less than $14 billion in FY98 to $27 billion in FY03.

Six years later, Specter again swelled the NIH’s coffers, this time nearly single-handedly. He persuaded Senate Democrats and the Obama administration to increase NIH’s allocation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to $10 billion. This success was followed by his principled decision to support the bill, a decision that proved to be politically suicidal, infuriating many of his Republican colleagues and paving his path to the exit.

Specter’s commitment to the NIH was not exclusively expressed in legislated dollars. He encouraged pursuit of new scientific opportunities, especially when he was convinced of their promise for improving human health. This encouragement was evident in his enthusiasm for the Human Genome Project and, in particular, for human embryonic stem cell research. He fearlessly bucked many in his own party to take on the opposition, calling special hearings on stem cells and posing legal arguments to expose the hypocrisy of some who objected to potentially life-saving research.

Some of the NIH’s most potent advocates act on behalf of family members who have suffered dread diseases. Specter rarely alluded to familial illnesses, but was unabashed about describing his own battles with heart disease (he had had coronary by-pass surgery), dental decay, and cancers (he had multiple treatments for meningioma and successful therapy for Hodgkin Disease before his terminal bout with Burkitt lymphoma).

When undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin in 2005, Specter performed remarkable public service by demonstrating the importance of treating cancer vigorously in the elderly (he was 75 at the time), by showing that it is possible to continue work and exercise during treatment (he remained an indefatigable squash player), and by placing his drug-induced baldness in a humorous perspective. (His highly applauded aplomb may have sparked his late-in-life interest in stand-up comedy, an unexpected career turn that can be viewed at www.youtube.com.)

Despite his later forays into comedy and his generosity toward the NIH, Specter was famously gruff and impatient, even with his friends, his allies, and his extraordinarily loyal staff. My first taste of this came in 1994 during my first appearance as NIH Director before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee. When I ignored the red light denoting the rarely honored 5-minute mark, Chairman Specter interrupted my carefully crafted testimony to bark out “Sound bites, Dr. Varmus, sound bites!”

Like all modern politicians, Specter knew that his political survival depended on his ability to raise funds for his campaigns, not just on his good work as a legislator. Although he managed to be the longest-serving Senator from Pennsylvania, winning five full terms, his fund-raising abilities were inherently limited by his independence from his party’s platform; by an impatient, even brusque, manner that could offend potential donors; and by his ambivalent beneficiaries, among them many biomedical scientists.

More of our colleagues are blue than red, and most resist the assumption that they should display fiscal fealty, like others with vested interests, simply because a member of Congress takes responsibility for their budgetary welfare. This attitude mystified Arlen Specter. He often complained to me, especially when he was on the ropes in fights for reelection, that the thousands of scientists whose work relied on a strong NIH budget failed to understand that they needed to preserve his voice in the Congress, even if they did not agree with him on all topics.

His ability to endure politically, despite obstacles to his easy success, was grounded in a hardscrabble upbringing. Specter’s father was a Jewish immigrant from the Ukraine who served in the first World War but then struggled to support his family as a peddler and junkyard manager in Kansas towns, like Russell, where Jews were oddities. However, Specter’s rise from hard times, through his education at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale Law School, forged his life-long belief that strong institutions could help determined individuals overcome adversity and achieve great things.

Senator Specter’s death is yet another milestone in the disappearance of a legendary cohort of Congressional advocates for medical research. Over the past two decades, death or retirement from Congress have removed nearly all of the most prominent members of that notable contingent, some of whom were Republicans, some Democrats, or—as in Specter’s case—both: William Natcher, Mark Hatfield, John Porter, David Obey, Ted Kennedy, and now Arlen Specter. This loss has left few, other than Tom Harkin, to maintain our national investment in medical research, bearing both the enthusiasm that comes from personal conviction and the power that is conferred by crucial committee assignments.

Speakers at the Senator’s funeral noted that his favorite sayings were “never give up” and “you are never too far ahead to lose and never too far behind to win.” He applied these mantras to the games of squash and politics. He would now admonish us to remember them as we pursue medical science without him.