MikeHi@anon.com wrote:
> ...
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0609124557.htm
> ...
>
> I report this not so much for its own sake, but for its typicality.
>
> This is one of hundreds of research papers published in the past year.
> ...
> But I have one question which has been troubling me. All these
> hundreds of research units have been advancing steadily on THEIR Pca
> front. Is their a Commander in Chief anywhere? Is anybody able to
> coordinate all these different, fast-moving, penetrating thrusts? Many
> are funded by private companies with patents at stake. I have no
> ideological quarrel with that. More power to their dollars in finding
> the solution. But what about conflicting egos slowing things up
> (Montgomery, Eisenhower), conflicting patent chases (who gets to
> Berlin first, wins).
> ...
The questions you ask are certainly interesting ones.
In the U.S., the closest thing to a "Commander in Chief" is the
U.S. National Cancer Institute. It dispenses more money for
cancer research than any other institution and therefore has a
great role in determining what research is funded and what is
not. There are also some private institutions including the
American Cancer Society, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and some
others, that dispense funds for research and therefore determine
what research should be done and by whom.
I don't know the economics of private drug companies very well,
but I suspect that they are relatively minor players in cancer
research as compared to the public and non-profit institutions.
They focus heavily on chronic conditions like high blood
pressure, high cholesterol, depression, diabetes, etc., that
bring in steady money over a long term. They're less interested
in cancer - though they do invest some money. Obviously, their
sole interest is profit. If someone discovered a cheap drug that
would cure cancer with one dose, the drug companies wouldn't
care and wouldn't invest in developing it.
How do the public and non-profit institutions determine how to
spend their money?
As I understand it, each of them has boards of scientific
advisers. These boards read and discuss the latest research and
form opinions about what is promising and what is not. They then
advise the NCI or other institution about where to emphasize
funding. They also have scientific teams that review proposals
submitted to them to try to select the most promising proposals
for funding. It's typically a very difficult task because the
number of promising proposals generally greatly exceeds the
amount of available funds.
I work as a computer programmer at NCI and have had some
peripheral contact with this proces - observing a few of the
public meetings of one of their scientific boards. I was deeply
impressed by both the knowledge and the commitment of the board
members. They were about equally divided between leading
scientists and leading medical practitioners and, between them,
they had a great deal of knowledge and hundreds of person years
of experience in treating cancer.
There are also organizations of patients that are consulted by
the NCI and by some of the private foundations. I don't think
they play a role in determining whether nanotechnology or immune
system development are funded, but they do get to express views
about things like whether patient education, screening and
prevention, etc., are funded, and may have played an important
role in the last several decades in getting more funding for
breast cancer research.
It isn't a perfect process. There are some bad decisions made.
There is a tendency to fund existing prestigious labs at the
expense of young scientists who may have great ideas but don't
have the reputations that attract funding. There is at least
some diversion of funds into "sexy" areas of research like
nanotechnology or oncogenes that may go beyond the real promise
of those fields. But, on the whole, I'm not sure how to go about
producing a better process.
Alan
Pinging NG scientists, researchers especially. Brakes on my exponential lightspeed? 
Linear Mode
