OLPA - Hearings - 107th Congress First Session - Comprehensive Medical Care for Bioterrorism Exposure

Interesting panel in congressional hearings on the threat of bioterrorism and whether or not nutrition can help. A couple of interesting comments I would like to remember. There is a paragraph worth quoting here: (emphasis is mine)

"Dr. McDaniel said that Government officials do not like to consider unconventional therapies because the agencies will be blamed if they turn out to be dangerous. Dr. McDaniel also said that research is very expensive; thus, agencies are reluctant to support studies that may not be successful."

Did you catch that? "Research is expensive..." yeah, so... "agencies are reluctant to support studies that may not be successful". That sounds like research grant-giving agencies are afraid to give research grant moneys to studies that they think might fail. Does that make it true research? Not really. If every hypothesis put forward can't be tested then some things that might be a cure for a particular disease might not get any research dollars IF the agencies don't think it will work. So then the scientists presumably go back and rewrite the grant requests for research that will get their approval. They have to make a living too, afterall. The rule of acedamia has always been "Publish or perish."

So you spend your reputation and hours and hours of your time trying to raise funds for research to be done on - hrm, let's say a breast cancer cure. You knock on your family's door, your friends and neighbors', and the cubical wall of the guy who sits next to you in the cube farm. You ask him to donate to your walk for a cure of breast cancer. Each one does or doesn't, but some feel compelled, out of guilt or compassion, or peer pressure... to open their wallets. The breast cancer campaigns raise millions upon millions of dollars annually. The numbers are staggering. The money goes to pay for advertising for the event, promotion, t-shirts for the volunteers, tables for registering, administration staff who stay on all year long, and finally research. But someone up there, gets to pick from a pile of grants applications, who gets the dough to test their hypothesis. I can bet you its not the guy who says a naturally occuring molecule in a plant needs some attention. It's going to go to the one who already had a $300 lunch with a drug company executive, who is promising to put his name on the patent if he would just test this particular compound. Looks like rat poison, in fact it is... but if we can show a statistical significance of an improvement in a symptom or two of 30% of the women who are desperate enough to be a guinea pig for this particular phase... we're gonna sell a ton and drugs and make a ton of money. Don't think that they have your well being on their hearts and in their minds. They are thinking of the stocks and the market share.

Oh, but we're supposed to be talking about bioterrorism here.. I digress. The rest of that paragraph reads as follows:

"Dr. Gorbach indicated that he has received several NIH grants for other research that he is conducting. However, all of his probiotics grant applications have been rejected. He said that NIH review committees and study sections do not believe in this kind of research. Even if NIH puts out a request for applications in this area, applications will get rejected in study sections."

We can put a man on the moon, but we can't find a solution for cancer? That's more than a little fishy to me. And shark cartilige is NOT the answer, contrary to that book title, sharks DO get cancer.

The rest of that article is here, have a skim over it. And see what you think.

OLPA - Hearings - 107th Congress First Session - Comprehensive Medical Care for Bioterrorism Exposure: "McDaniel"