Posted on 03/16/2014 5:22:19 AM PDT by reaganaut1
...
American science, long a source of national power and pride, is increasingly becoming a private enterprise.
In Washington, budget cuts have left the nation’s research complex reeling. Labs are closing. Scientists are being laid off. Projects are being put on the shelf, especially in the risky, freewheeling realm of basic research. Yet from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, science philanthropy is hot, as many of the richest Americans seek to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research.
...
Fundamentally at stake, the critics say, is the social contract that cultivates science for the common good. They worry that the philanthropic billions tend to enrich elite universities at the expense of poor ones, while undermining political support for federally sponsored research and its efforts to foster a greater diversity of opportunity — geographic, economic, racial — among the nation’s scientific investigators.
Historically, disease research has been particularly prone to unequal attention along racial and economic lines. A look at major initiatives suggests that the philanthropists’ war on disease risks widening that gap, as a number of the campaigns, driven by personal adversity, target illnesses that predominantly afflict white people — like cystic fibrosis, melanoma and ovarian cancer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
DUH only a few diseases are race centric. My Endo’s office is full of all races. Fibromyalgia-FMS, MD, MS, LGD no know color, nor doses the Big C cancer. FMS is symptom treated, and the drugs make it worse as they have the same side effects as the disease.
OA/OP hits all races too. Diabetes, thyroid issues, digestive issues, you name it any race could have it. No one is immune from GERD/IBS either.
Breast cancer can come down the Male line. My 2 Aunts married 2 brothers, both their daughters have the genetic link from their dad’s side. And some of their daughters have it to, to pass on to their daughters.
Orphan diseases like FMS are not being well researched, 1-2% of population have it 80% are women, most are also Hypothyroid. So add GENDER to that idiot article.
Damaged Care Break Down of Health Care
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/02/health/health052102.htm
First Do No Harm
http://www.naturalhealthstrategies.com/ketogenic-diet-movie.html
Les Miserables.
“Being a minority with special needs means those needs can not be met because limited resources are expended for the greater good.”
Actually, there is a debate about that. You will make more money if you can cure baldness in men rather than a fatal rare disease. Ditto for acne.
Patent law currently gives more years to “orphan drugs” which only treat rare fatal diseases.
Then of course there is the basic research vs. applied research debated.
Basic research is knowledge for knowledge sake but often leads to great advances, quantum leaps if you will down the road but also often leads to dead ends and wasted money.
Applied research is research to solve a specific problem which has a higher success rate but is rarely a quantum jump.
They have the smart people, and they have lots of poor sick people who would be willing to engage in clinical trials in exchange for a shot at a cure. The single biggest research expense in US research are the testing and trials. They also don't have the trial-lawyer overhead to worry about if some of the clinical trial test subjects get hit by side effects.
They would still have to do US clinical trials to get FDA approval, but they would ONLY need to test drugs that already passed their trials. And if the US FDA is slow on granting approval for Chinese cancer treatments, that just means that US cancer patients will get on a plane to Hong Kong.
Really?
A PhD probably earns more than someone with a BS in the same field, but the average family physician earns significantly more than the PhD, and a specialized physician earns several times more. I have talked to physicians who earn over $400,000 per year--while I may never see a 6 figure salary with my PhD. That's okay--I didn't go into science for the money; no one does.
“Joking that his [Obama] grades in physics made him a dubious candidate for “scientist in chief,””
You don’t say? How about releasing your university records so we can all get the joke? /not holding breath.
“In Washington, budget cuts have left the nation’s research complex reeling. Labs are closing. Scientists are being laid off. Projects are being put on the shelf, especially in the risky, freewheeling realm of basic research.”
And just whose fault is THAT? Maybe if the scientist in chief wasn’t spending a trillion dollars on “stimulus”, requiring NASA to spend scarce funds on Muslim outreach, and doing his best to expand the welfare state, we might be able to fund a few more projects. *SMH*
I would think Duke faculty would be paid well. What field were they in?
“Global warming exists because of government grants. Period.”
You’ve got that right. It’s the politics of fear. In the ‘60’s it was an upcoming ice age, peak oil and Russian nukes. Global warming was easier and you could ascribe any horror to it you wanted; mass migrations, flooded cities, total human extinction, the rise of dreaded conservatism...
And, if it gets too ridiculous, you ridicule the other side and declare them evil deniers. Shun them! Cancel their funding until they see the light.
I guess he's NOT the smartest man in the room all the time. Let's give him a high school physics test and see how he does. Or maybe some "gotcha" physics questions from interviewers.
"President obama, please state Newton's Second Law and give us a few examples in daily life."
Look at everything impoverished people of color have given us and see how we repay them... By increasing our own control over God’s diseases! All you need to do is catch a glimpse of any ER on any weekend night and you can see how the white establishment uses its ill-gotten powers to manipulate the health and welfare of America’s under-appreciated class. It’s time for these oppressors: the inventors, creators, business owners, patent holders, to bow out and make room for the new leaders. It is their savvy, their drive, their long-quashed determination, that will move America forward. First, however, let us please help give them free food and stuff.
Feminists often bloviate about medical research being done for men. Actually, men are experimented on more. This is because they are more stable subjects. It is simple biology.
Of course people donate on diseases that affect or are affecting them. Only a deluded leftist can suggest that these people donate to research on diseases that will never affect them or their heirs... especially demanding contributions for diseases that are afflicting segments of society that are pulling the country (and maybe the world) into the gutter.
What if, just what if.... these afflictions and disease are Divine Judgment? I don’t know... but don’t demand I go against God.
Yes, it’s all about those rich white people!
I wish they would come up with something for cramps in the arches of my feet. Sometimes it’s tough keeping them pressed down on the necks of the poor people.
/sarcasm
Bingo!
Just about every man, if they live long enough, will get some form of prostate issue. So...it’s just “normal.”
If these "laid off scientists" are so enthralled with their chosen fields of study, and consider it vitally important to benefit the future of humanity....
...maybe they should take some of their obscenely excess disposable-income and build laboratories in their own garages.
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” —Richard Feynman
Well, then who's stopping a bunch of overfed black fat-cats from funding research to benefit only "their people"?
The government does not choose the metrics; the scientists who are working the problem do that. Tumor shrinkage is a direct result of cytotoxicity against the cancer cells--as the cancer cells die, the tumor shrinks. So, for a researcher looking to kill off the cancer, that is a pretty good indicator that the treatment is effective.
The development of resistance to the cancer drugs is pretty much an unavoidable consequence of treatment. It is analogous to bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Cancer cells within a tumor are not genetically identical, so some are less affected by the cancer drug than others. So, if the drug does not kill *all* of the cancer cells, the ones that survive and grow are the ones that were already somewhat resistant to the drug.
The government insisted on a molecular biological approach and only funded those efforts. Alternative approaches like treatments that prevented the growth of feeder arteries and veins were not investigated until recently. Some scientists urged treating symptoms rather than trying to kill the underlying mechanism as that is a moving target. They didn’t get government funding and the government is the only game. Survival rates for some cancers hasn’t changed since the ‘50’s, which would argue for a different approach.
Since cancer is a disease of disregulation of cell growth, which occurs at the molecular level, the molecular biology approach towards understanding cancer is completely appropriate. What you call "alternative approaches" are actually molecular biology approaches that were not even possible ten or twenty years ago, because the underlying molecular mechanisms were not known yet. And those mechanisms are known now because of research in the field of toxicology, not cancer. Since we still (after decades of research) do not know exactly how dioxin kills, researchers were looking for clues. As a result, they discovered a previously unknown component of the toxic response system that controls angiogenesis (growth of blood vessels). Once that component was discovered, it did not take long for other scientists to show that the same component is responsible for blood vessel growth in tumors. So, with the discovery of this new molecular target for therapy, other scientist started developing new drugs, some of which are being tested clinically for cancer treatment. This research, like most research, is funded by a variety of government and private sources.
Treating symptoms is fine for patient care, in that it makes the patient more comfortable. But it does nothing to cure the underlying problem. Still, scientists looking to treat symptoms also get funding. Keep in mind, it is not the government that decides how the funds are disbursed, but rather committees of scientists, mostly from academia. They decide whether projects are funded, based on whether they think the project has scientific merit.
I don’t accuse scientists of getting rich. But when I worked at a college lab they viewed grants as their job, not finding solutions. I’m sure there are dedicated scientists. But they must share funding with hacks who simply like university life.
Without grants, a university scientist cannot perform his/her work. It is an unfortunate fact of life that university scientists end up spending a disproportionate amount of their time writing up grant proposals and sitting on grant review committees. Even as a post-doc student, I read and judged grant proposals. The biggest complaint from university professors is that they do not have time to go into the lab and work at the bench--the very work that they became scientists to do. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I actually saw my mentor doing bench work in the lab. I've seen what university life looks like, and chose to do something else with my education. While I would love to teach, I hate the baggage that comes with it.
Well--yes. They are liberals, are they not?
--From Eisenhower's farewell Address, 1961.
In contrast, his remarks about the "military-industrial complex" were embedded in his Cold War recognition of the necessity for a powerful and mighty military. His warning was only about corruption and undue influence.
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