How academia wasted $105 billion of cancer research money

[tj2001]

June 28, 2009
Grant System Leads Cancer Researchers to Play It Safe
By GINA KOLATA

Among the recent research grants awarded by the National Cancer Institute is one for a study asking whether people who are especially responsive to good-tasting food have the most difficulty staying on a diet. Another study will assess a Web-based program that encourages families to choose more healthful foods.

Many other grants involve biological research unlikely to break new ground. For example, one project asks whether a laboratory discovery involving colon cancer also applies to breast cancer. But even if it does apply, there is no treatment yet that exploits it.

The cancer institute has spent $105 billion since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971. The American Cancer Society, the largest private financer of cancer research, has spent about $3.4 billion on research grants since 1946.

Yet the fight against cancer is going slower than most had hoped, with only small changes in the death rate in the almost 40 years since it began.

One major impediment, scientists agree, is the grant system itself. It has become a sort of jobs program, a way to keep research laboratories going year after year with the understanding that the focus will be on small projects unlikely to take significant steps toward curing cancer...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/health/research/28cancer.html?_r=1&em

[Orwellian_Ghost]

1. K&R

[readmoreoften]

2. K&R. The wages of profit are death.

Can't put a whole industry out of work, can we? :sarcasm:

[lindisfarne]

3. Unfortunately, Bush policies made it even worse. At some NIH institutes, funding got cut &redirected

to military & homeland security research only marginally connected to the NIH's mission, because of the way laws were written & political pressure was exerted.

In many areas, the number of projects that could be funded got cut by 50%. If too many projects produce nothing, the NIH faces criticism from Congress. It used to be that some small percent of "risky but possibly big payoff" projects got funded, but after Bush cut funds, most of those got cut, and mainly research that was likely to produce some results got funded.

With the Obama stimulus package, things began improving. Rather than have new grant competitions (which take time), directors of NIH institutes planned to fund the best grants that had been judged worthy but which had not been funded due to the previous cuts. This was aimed at getting the stimulus funds circulating fastest in the economy.

Believe me, cancer has it darn good in the research $ category, too. And progress has been made - lots. There's a lot yet to be done, though.

=======
*Why does *Obama* show up with a red line under it, indicating a misspelling?)

[KittyWampus]

4. No funds without preliminary results. No preliminary results without funding.

[azul]

5. Something ain't right in the system when

more profits are to be made in treating rather than curing disease.

And what if many chemicals were involved in producing cancers that would have to be changed to safer ones and the toxic mess cleaned-up? All synthetic chemicals re-examined for epigenetic toxicities?

Progress is being made, but way too slowly and almost indirectly IMO.

[dkf]

6. This pisses me off big time.

Who in the world thinks we are going to cure cancer by studying eating habits? Frankly, people are too undisciplined to do the right thing to stay healthy, especially Americans.

We need true cures, not studies on marginal lifestyle changes.

[madmax]

9. No matter what your dietary habits were befor cancer

if one cares at all about making it for a few more years, they make dramatic changes. Trust me, I know.

[dkf]

10. Yes, but too few people feel the urgency until they get cancer, which is

too late.

[madmax]

23. ...

[Donnachaidh]

7. Got a book you must read --

The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Hardcover)
by Devra Davis (Author)

This goes into great depth on how organizations like the National Cancer Institute and others have NO plans on finding cures in the near future. They want job security for themselves. :sarcasm:

[chill_wind]

8. K & R. n/t

[Booster]

11. If you pay somebody to look for something they will never find it.

Way too much money involved in this. Not just cancer, but every other disease you can think of. They can sure treat a disease, but that's where the real money is - not in curing it.

[GeorgeGist]

12. Small changes

Cancer Death Rate Steadily Declining
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x_Cancer_Death_Rate_Steadily_Declining.asp
Cancer death rate dropped nearly 20 percent in 15 years
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/27/health.cancer.death.rate/index.html#cnnSTCText

5 minutes of research would have saved Gina from wasting time.

[KittyWampus]

14. how much of that drop is due to doctors no longer prescribing estrogen replacement therapy?

Medical science CAUSED cancer big time in that case.

[LisaL]

21. Do you understand what "death rate" is?

[progressoid]

13. Wow, what a poorly written article.

[RoyGBiv]

15. Agreed ...

The ambiguities and presumptions presented as conclusions alone are enough to send it back to the author for a re-write.

[hootinholler]

24. Coupled with a disingeneous headline n/t

[LeftishBrit]

16. This is the world of research in the short-term research funding culture

Not specific to cancer.

Most grants are for 3 or occasionally at most 5 years. It's easier to get a grant for a short-term project to study a question to which you think you probably already know the answer, than to do longer, riskier research which may turn out to lead down a blind alley - or may get very important results.


Despite this, there *has* been quite a lot of progress over several types of cancer in recent years (I know people who would have been much less likely to survive 20 years ago) - but we all long for more.

[LisaL]

17. The OP has come up with a very misleading title for this post.

It's not reflected by the article. And it's already been pointed out that the cancer survival rates have improved.

[aikoaiko]

18. I don't see anything in the article to suggest the money was wasted.

It looks like the government funded exactly what it wanted and got what it paid for. How is that wasted?

If we want people to take bigger chances, then fund those grants. If those grants don't produce "the cure" and have even less to show than the current grants will we have another article taking about "how academia wasted money on wild guesses"?

[LisaL]

19. Exactly. I just posted the same thing.

The OP made that title up.

[jpak]

20. What a steaming pile of ignorant anti-science anti-intellectual anti-academic horseshit

:puke:

[La Lioness Priyanka]

22. well stated.

[PVnRT]

25. +1 (n/t)

[laureloak]

26. So who is blocking promising cancer research?

That is the real question.

[eppur_se_muova]

27. -1 nt