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 ...
I think people who read and believe the New York Times are among the most racist people in America. How could they not be? What effin’ crap this article is!
I wish it were that easy. Polio was caused by a single virus, and it turned out fairly straightforward to make a vaccine for it. Cancer is a general term for a lot of different diseases with complex causes. We are making progress in the fight against cancer. We can prevent a few cancers and treat others, and the death rate from cancer has gone down. But finding a permanent cure or figuring out how to prevent all cancer is still a long ways away.
There may be a lot of money in research, and it is true that scientists are always asking for funding. But they are not getting rich from it. The funding goes for lab supplies, equipment, hired help, graduate students, etc., which are all expensive. People whose main goal is to get rich don't go into research. There are many other professions one can choose if one's main goal is to get rich, and none of those other professions is as difficult to enter as science. Getting a PhD is *not* trivial.
Because historically, so many cures have been discovered by government agencies, unlike private ones. If I can think of an example, I'll post it.
Science for CENTURIES was a private enterprise. Only the rich could afford the time and resources to noodle around with stuff.
I know someone going for a doctorate in biology. To quote: "the key is to find something to research that costs less than your grant."
Yes, he's a liberal.
If I remember correctly wasn’t Edison’s Laboratory and research center a ‘Private’ entity and so was Bell Labs, Westinghouse and others?
Really now, it’s only been since NASA came on the scene that the Government got it’s grubby fingers into the research ‘Pie’ in earnest. And now today private industry and the Universities look first to government to fund their research.
“What? You didn’t know that Eli Whitney, Robert Fulton, Samuel Colt, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were government employees?’
Well, it is plain to me that they were until the budget was slashed to the bone. My kids history book probably says that. How could our congressman be so uncaring by repeating history and cutting our budget today?
My dad died of prostate cancer 2 years ago. It’s far from rare I believe.
Instead of sitting on their butts and doing nothing, maybe they could get a home chemistry set and start doing their own experimentation
And the funding that they seek is all politically based.
This is getting so tiresome that I'm almost eager for the shooting to start.
The biggest problem with cancer treatment research is that some of the most effective treatments require lifestyle changes for the patient and don’t provide huge profits for the medical industry.
And they will primarily give funding to the people who they think are most likely to produce results, without regard for "diversity" or affirmative action.
Yet another irony that the left decries Republicans cutting research dollars, then cuts real research even deeper in the name of subsidizing faux science.
“Cancer is a general term for a lot of different diseases with complex causes.”
One problem, as I see it, is the metric the government chose; shrinking the tumor. So, treatments were developed which did that, but they only worked on a percentage of the continuous mutations. When the treatment wiped out the mutations it was effective against (causing shrinkage) only the mutations it was not effective against were left to multiply.
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.
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.
They can fund all the black scientists to work on black diseases.
Global warming exists because of government grants. Period.
Relax!
WIth Obamacare, only officials in the Federal Gov’t will have access to state of the art medical care.
The rest of you peasants have a “duty to die”, lest you deplete the coffers of the vote buying, entitlement programs.
“There are many other professions one can choose if one’s main goal is to get rich”
I was at a wedding reception last night for a couple of Duke PhDs. They seem to be doing just fine moneywise.
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