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Senior Member
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: "all the way over on the West Coast"
Posts: 1,032
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Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: "all the way over on the West Coast"
Posts: 1,032
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Vicky - Two other quick points:
1. Lobbyists can influence the overall amount of money appropriated by Congress for the NIH, but they have no power, and neither does Congress, to influence how the NIH actually allocates and spends the money. That is because they believe in precisely the point you made - government should not interfere in the scientific process; it's up to the various NIH institutes to make budget and funding decisions based on the science, not politics. (Bush stymied this hands-off policy by stopping stem cell research by Executive Order).
2. Lobbyists would love to be able to move Big Pharma and Biotech to pay more attention to cures - but treatments that are never ending are much more lucrative. Why cure someone when we can keep them buying our drugs for their whole lives? is the drug company motto.
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Carey
“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.” — Susan B. Anthony
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