The Next President?

[jamiebk]

And there are some of us who registered Republican and support things like stem-cell research, health system reform, and oppose the right-to-life absolutists and the folks who want to sneak their religion into science and law by calling it other things.

Assuming that those are views you hold...we are of similar mind and I quite agree

[OperaTenor]

For something that is supposed to be the next coming in medical research don't you find it curious that not one major drug company is doing any research on stem cells? I'll get serious about stem cells when they do.

BBB to Piq! BBB to Piq!

Reply needed!

(My wife and I have have discussed this quite a bit, and she cites the fact that virtually ALL scientific research in this country is tied to Federal funding. Think chicken and egg.)

[OperaTenor]

Sometimes I wish both parties could lose.

I mad a similar comment a while back. Why is it if we decide to throw one out, we have to put the other in?

Something we can all agree on, I think.

Hey, I voted for Ross Perot in '92.

[Shapley]

If that's true, then it is only because we've allowed it to be so. If you dangle enough money out there, the dancers will come to your end of the bar, keep sticking money in their garters, and they'll stay there.

Scientific American interview

[barfle]

The Republican Party votes on a party platform, which defines the party's position on the issues we believe most strongly about. That platform has not changed significantly since the days of Rondalus Maximus.

One cannot help but notice that the so-called "conservative" issue of reduced government spending was most nearly accomplished by a Democrat. The last time we had a balanced budget before Clinton was 1969. Since then, there have been Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Bush supposedly watching out for your tax dollars, with only Carter and Clinton borrowing and spending our way into prosperity. Republicans have abdicated their fiscal principles, which is one major reason I am no longer a Republican.

[OperaTenor]

I have the utmost respect for that fiscal conservatism, Barfle. I may have a differing view on aspects of it, but I think it's an honest perspective.

[Shapley]

I thought the funding issue didn't sound right. Here's an article from The Scientist that states that about half of research funding now comes from industry.

This shift is not because of reductions in government funding but rather due to increases in the amount industry spends on research. The rise in industry spending has far outpaced the increase in government-funded research. This can largely be attributed to two major reasons - first: industry has more money to invest due to the expanding economy and tax cuts, and second: there are tax incentives to investing in research.

V/R
Shapley

[audiogirl]

Sometimes I wish both parties could lose.

I mad a similar comment a while back. Why is it if we decide to throw one out, we have to put the other in?

Something we can all agree on, I think.

Hey, I voted for Ross Perot in '92.

Conservocrats? Liberublicans? It's about time the middle was represented by someone. It's as if the left has been hijacked by Hollywood and the right by legalistic bible-beaters.

[OperaTenor]

I thought the funding issue didn't sound right. Here's an article from The Scientist that states that about half of research funding now comes from industry.

And the other half comes from the Tooth Fairy?

This is from the article you cite:



Where is THE LARGEST PERCENTAGE of the money coming from, almost without exception?

[Shapley]

(My wife and I have have discussed this quite a bit, and she cites the fact that virtually ALL scientific research in this country is tied to Federal funding

emphasis yours

I'm merely pointing out that there is a BIG difference between virtually ALL and ~ 50%.

[jamiebk]

Something does not look right with that graph.

This is not exact, but just looking at the top 2 sources for 2002...government and Industry...it seems to add up to over 100%. Government is about 60% and Industry appears to be over 40%...maybe 43% or 44%...that does not even count all the other contributors.

The caption on the axis is "Percentage with Funding" so maybe I am not reading this correctly

[OperaTenor]

(My wife and I have have discussed this quite a bit, and she cites the fact that virtually ALL scientific research in this country is tied to Federal funding

emphasis yours

I'm merely pointing out that there is a BIG difference between virtually ALL and ~ 50%.

You score zero points for misreading my post.

"Tied to" does not mean " fully funded by". It means that virtually all research facilities rely on some level(percentage) of Federal funding to conduct their research.

If a lab loses ~50% of their research budget(that would be the government half), I can safely project that their research would be significantly negatively impacted. Prohibitively so, even.

[Shapley]

Jamie,

I agree, but it was the best source I could find with a quick search. My main concern was to indicate that there are several sources of non-government funding for research. If I get a chance tomorrow, I'll try to look for a better source.

Wikipedia has some information on it, but I try not to use Wikipedia as a source if I can avoid it. I thought this one was significant in that it is pro-government funding, as is actually bemoaning industry's funding as a sort of 'tainted' money.

Another article I read indicates that the government is the primary source for 'basic' and 'pure' scientific research, while industry is the primary source for 'specific' research, which makes sense. The article provided no numbers on the level of funding, and was thus of no use for this discussion.

V/R
Shapley

[Shapley]

OT,

So what does 'tied to government funding' mean? Are you saying industry won't fund research that the government won't fund? That no research will be conducted with some sort of government-approved funding mechanism?

I need some enlightenment here.

V/R
Shapley

[OperaTenor]

See my edit. We're posting too fast and furiously here, and I didn't complete my thought the first time out.

But, to add to it, if a lab doesn't have enough money, they don't do the research. If they get as much as half of the money they need from the Feds, then the loss of that money effectively stops their research dead in the water.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I'm impressed by the amount of the funding that comes from private/foundation grants, and the amount funded by professional societies. And I'm depressed by the amount that's university-funded.

I suspect that a lot of projects are funded partially from one pocket, partially from another - if any of the pockets include Federal money, Federal rules apply, and it's "tied to federal funding". Calculated that way, the "tied" research could very easily approach "all" without exceeding that federal financial percentage.

[OperaTenor]

Yes, what Selma said.

Also, if a given lab performs research in several different areas, and any one of those is not approved by the Feds, they get no Federal money for any of their research. That's a huge disincentive to conduct research on anything not approved for Federal funding.

Example:

"BioTamperAlterGene, Inc." does a wide variety of research that qualifies for Federal funding, and they get it. If they decide to start embryonic stem cell research, they lose all Federal funding they had been getting previously, even though it's not related to embryonic stem cell research.

[Shapley]

The article from The Scientist that I posted included this bit:

[quote]THE NUMBERS - INDUSTRY FUNDING ON THE RISE
• Industry funding increased during the 1990s, and in 2001 rose above 50% of the total funding pie, according to a study earlier this year in the British Medical Journal (BMJ, 332:1061-4, May 6, 2006). This compares to the years between 1993 and 1997, when industry funding fluctuated between 20% and 30% of total funding.

• Industry funding in randomized controlled trials increased during the 1990s. Of 32 frequently cited trials published after 1999, 31 received some industry funding, 18 exclusively so, according to the BMJ study[/i]

This would seem to indicate, based on my reading, that about half of the "frequently cited" trials received their funding exclusively from industry. I would guess that there were a number of factors behind this - restrictions on government funding possibly being one of them. As the article notes, about 40% of applications are noted as being 'worthy of funding' while only about 10-20% receive such funding. I would expect this has as much to do with financian constraints to a much larger extent than it would to ideological ones. I would also expect that, having been rejected for government funding, those researchers would go 'shopping for funding'. It would be reasonable to assume that those that were deemed 'worthy of funding' would have a leg-up on the remaining 60%, but that doesn't meant the rest don't get funded, either.

V/R
Shapley

[Haggis@wk]

I personally think all this funding talk is missing the point I tried to make.

If the big drug companies thought there was any money to be made from stem cell research then they'd make the money available to research it, full stop.

And on closer examination your "tainted by U.S. Govt restrictions" doesn’t bear up.

Not every big drug company is American. Roughly half of the largest drug companies are based in Europe. (The exact count shifts because of mergers.) In 2002, the top ten were the American companies Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Wyeth (formerly American Home Products); the British companies GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca; the Swiss companies Novartis and Roche; and the French company Aventis (which in 2004 merged with another French company, Sanafi Synthelabo, putting it in third place).

Those European companies definitely don’t rely on U.S. funds to research new way to gouge drug consumers. And some of those companies are privately held so they don't have to answer to anyone where they spend their research money.

My point was simply that they don't seem to regard stem cell as the pharmaceutical Holy Grail that the popular press is claiming.

Maybe the drug companies don’t know the science editor for the NYT is a college graduate?

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the drug companies are afraid of being on the bleeding rather than leading edge.

Or maybe they’ve looked at the available information and their college graduates decided there’s no “there” there.

Just my opinion.

[Trumpetmaster]

I could not vote for Hillary......
I'm not opposed to a woman president....

I am opposed to having Mr. Can't Keep it In his Pants
back in the White House as "First Man"