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To: exDemMom
Scientific research receives billions in federal money each year (that's tens or hundreds of billions). Biological sciences receive the bulk of that money.

A few months ago I tried to locate some solid numbers on this. This is all I could find. Most is medical research:

From the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): Biological and Ecological Sciences in the FY 2005 Budget:

";... funding for non-medical biology ... accounts for only 3 percent of all federally supported life science funding."

The National Science Foundation (NSF) remains the principal federal supporter of the biological and ecological sciences, providing 65 percent of the academic funding for non-medical biology. The NSF proposed budget for FY 2005 includes a 2.2 percent ($13 million) increase in funding for the Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO) to bring it to a total of $600 million.

That $600 million is broken down into Molecular and Cellular Biosci, Integrative Biology & Neurosci, Environmental Biology , Biological Infrastructure, Emerging Frontiers, Plant Genome Research. That seems to be all non-medical (and presumably, even creationists don't object to medical research). Here's a table with a breakdown of those expenditures by category: R&D in the National Science Foundation.

If that $600 million is 65% of all non-medical funding, the total (which would include other stuff from the Agriculture Dep't, forestry bureaucracies, oceanic research, etc.) is about $900 million for non-medical funding, which is 3% of federally supported life science funding. The grand total, adding in the medical funding, is therefore $30 billion. That's a nice number.

But it's only from federal funding. There is also a large amount of private, industrial funding, from biotech and pharmaceutical firms for example. (There is, of course, absolutely no creationism/ID research program of any kind, private or governmental.)

530 posted on 10/01/2005 10:34:59 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Disclaimer -- this information may be legally false in Kansas.)
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To: PatrickHenry
";... funding for non-medical biology ... accounts for only 3 percent of all federally supported life science funding."

That $600 million is broken down into Molecular and Cellular Biosci, Integrative Biology & Neurosci, Environmental Biology , Biological Infrastructure, Emerging Frontiers, Plant Genome Research. That seems to be all non-medical (and presumably, even creationists don't object to medical research). Here's a table with a breakdown of those expenditures by category:

I wonder exactly how the line is drawn between medical research and non-medical biological research. On the extremes, I guess there's a clear difference, but in the middle, it all runs together. In any case, you're correct--none of that money is going towards ID or creationism research.

543 posted on 10/02/2005 10:12:16 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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