The article “Half of
the cancer drugs journalists called “miracles” and “cures” were not approved by
the FDA” ( http://www.vox.com/2015/10/29/9637062/media-hype-cancer-drugs ) highlights a behavior that is more and more present
nowadays, especially in medical research.
Scientists working on human diseases face a constant daily pressure, which is exerted by a society willing a cure for a certain diseases, and by their own awareness that finding the right treatment could alleviate the pain of many other people.
Scientists working on human diseases face a constant daily pressure, which is exerted by a society willing a cure for a certain diseases, and by their own awareness that finding the right treatment could alleviate the pain of many other people.
The problem is that no one is immune to this type of
pressure. The president Obama during his last State of the Union speech says “Last year, Vice President Biden said that
with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer… For the loved ones we've all lost,
for the family we can still save, let's make America the country that cures
cancer once and for all.” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJDyBBGncQc
)
This type of prevailing sentiment is affecting
researchers all around the world and the quality of research gets more and more
susceptible to bias and overselling.
In addition to the social pressure,
there is another big factor...money. The financing of the research reaches
amounts that we cannot even imagine. As a young scientist I am just approaching
to this kind of issues and I’m starting to see the loop in which researchers
are trapped. In order to be able to perform the experiments, scientists need
money, which is given only if good, novel and interesting results are shown.
Nowadays, it is not only the quality of
work that matters, but how good you can “sell” it to the people that will
decide if you can get founded or not. If this type of loops keeps going on, universities
should start consider introducing a marketing course for the scientific tracks.
Most of these issues aroused from the
fact that the amount of money given to the research was diminished, on the
contrary, the number of scientists increased, making more difficult for everyone
to get the necessary financing.
I think you bring up a really good point about medical research - that cures for certain diseases become politically and socially-funded. You may want to check out The Emperor of all Maladies, if you have not already. Here, the author goes through the history of cancer (he was an oncologist), and he notes how cancer has been around forever, but the attention and $$$ started really being directed towards it during President Nixon's time. Nixon declared a "war on cancer" in the 70's. The attention and funding over the past 40+ years has not produced a cure, as the article you mention points out. While I agree that the funding climate is bad right now, are we sure that more funding will result in a cure for diseases popular today? If we use our history as evidence, I don't think we have much evidence to support the belief that it will. However, that is not to say that gradual small advances overtime won't amount to a breakthrough. That is also not to say that curing cancer is necessarily as difficult as curing other diseases, such as Parkinson's. However, it is interesting to note the similarities between our Brain Initiative today, and the "war on cancer" then.
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