GELFAND’S WORLD-A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about attempts to engage students in science and mathematics. That's a worthwhile idea, and there are even some jobs available, largely in the private sector. What is largely absent from public discourse is the elephant in the bedroom, the declining level of funding support for real science practiced by trained scientists. I'm going to do this brief discussion without the mathematics, so fear not.
The science and technology show I was writing about was presented in conjunction with tours of US Navy fighting ships. Visitors were looking at a couple of billion dollars worth of gray steel, and operational costs that have to be considerable.
I only bring this up because we ought to be asking an important question: Which do we fear more right now, an armed invasion of the United States, or cancer? Losing some influence overseas, or dying of Lou Gehrig's disease (the subject of the ice water challenge)? I can add to the long list of ills that the flesh is prey to, but you get the drift. My guess is that nearly every single reader of this column has lost a loved one to cancer, or has a loved one who has been treated for cancer, or has been treated for cancer. It's that prevalent.
But I would also like to point out that the future is very positive, because biological science has now developed the tools to piece through the complexities of cellular biology, to find out which parts are most likely to go wrong, and to develop treatments to repair those damaged parts. It's been a forty year battle that first developed the tools, then accumulated the basic knowledge, and will soon develop the next phase of effective treatments.
Victory won't come easy. The task is made enormously more complex by the realization that each cancer is, to some extent, different.
So what are we doing about all of this? I would say that the past 30 years have been a remarkable run. We've seen enormous advances, to the point that what was once just a laboratory technique known as the monoclonal antibody is now being used in numerous inventive ways, not only to treat cancer, but in that new experimental Ebola drug you've all read about.
This progress involved a lot of research, mostly done in academic labs -- the universities and research institutes -- and to a certain extent by the pharmaceutical companies.
Research costs money. That's because it requires people who have to be paid salaries, supplies that can be expensive, and a lot of fairly sophisticated equipment. A reasonable price for equipping a modern lab might start at a few hundred thousand dollars, and go up according to the level of sophistication required of its instrumentation.
There is a certain amount of momentum in the system, in the sense that new researchers come out of the training programs looking to branch out into new fields independently, and needing both money and workers of their own.
Now for the bad news. When you talk to people in the field, the ones who are struggling to continue the good work, they will tell you that when it comes to funding, it's never been worse in their entire experience.
The metric here is the research grant -- how many are awarded in any one year, how much they are for, and how many applications get turned down. At this moment, the chance of turning in a major grant application and getting it funded is something like one in twenty. That's for scientists who have gone through rigorous training, have shown that they have what it takes, and have good ideas about how to proceed. I'm not saying that all grant applications are wonderful, but that a large number are pretty good and still get rejected due to lack of funding.
Considering the promise of cancer research, not to mention research into all manner of other diseases, it would make sense for the U.S. government to maintain biological and medical research funding at least at levels that match inflation. Our current and recent budgets don't even go that far. A more ambitious goal would be to increase the funding by fifty percent. That would put a lot of well trained people to work on productive tasks.
The scientific advances up to this point are wonderful, but the sheer magnitude of information we've amassed results in lots of ideas and possibilities. There are hundreds or even thousands of genes that merit close study, and we have the opportunity to investigate them in previously unattainable depth, but only if we apply the resources to the task.
This leads me to the topic of the ice water challenge and all those ten kilometer runs dedicated to raising money for research. The ALS Foundation points out that their donations have gone up enormously since the ice water challenge has (excuse the expression) gone viral. We also have runs for breast cancer research, and the supermarket where I shop actually invites me to add a little something to my payment for prostate cancer research.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against these campaigns. The March of Dimes contributed to the defeat of polio, the American Cancer Society and the Heart Association are all in the fight. The problem has to do with the amount of money that private foundations raise and distribute, as compared to the level that the U.S. government can raise and spend.
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In a federal budget in the multi-trillions, it wouldn't appear to be that much of a chore to raise the medical and scientific research budgets by 20 or 30 billion dollars. It's a lot of money, but by federal budget standards it's modest, and it would go to defeat diseases that are some of our worst fears. Compared to spending on defense, Social Security, and Medicare, this is pretty close to what the politicians refer to as budget dust.
I've written previously about the children and adults who hope to have their brain tumors get better under some quack nostrum. The problem for these people, and for scientific medicine, is that there aren't a lot of good drugs or technologies for many of these tumors. The patients are left grasping for hope, and the research community and the oncologists are left in a state of perpetual frustration at their inability to cure these people today.
On blogs dedicated to discussing scientific medicine, I've repeatedly pointed out that the brain cancer patients will desert the quacks just as soon as effective new therapies come into being. Until then, these patients are left between the proverbial rock and hard place. They are told by their doctors that they should do their best to enjoy what is left of their lives, but that there is little that modern medicine can do except to keep them as comfortable as possible. The quacks offer quack treatments, and provide a little bit of hope for a little while.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could develop the knowledge about those tumors so that we could develop the treatments that would kill the cancerous cells?
You may be thinking that science is doing it's best to actually do this. You would be wrong. But it's not the fault of the scientists or the science establishment. It's a simple lack of funding. And that could be fixed quickly.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
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CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 68
Pub: Aug 22, 2014