I’m not going to dispute what Francis Collins said but Ebola research is only a small portion of what the NIH funds every year and I’m sure they work to try to prioritize their funding for sure.  Yes we still have a lot of “garbage” that gets funded and I see enough of that with some of the apps and useless devices that are out there that reference NIH research too.  I’ve read some of the strangest app descriptions that take NIH research and twist it out of context as well to make a case for some little dippy app that gets a million or so funding as a start up that we know is going nowhere.  The millions that are wasted on such is unbelievable as I read this stuff every day.  We end up with a lot of quantitated justifications for things that are not true or what they seem to be.

Quantitated Justification For Believing Things That Are Not True And Using Mathematical Processes To Fool Ourselves-The Journalistic Bot Functionality Debuts As Media Can’t Resist the Formulas…

The NIH is however, pushing to vaccinate entire countries with an Ebola vaccine and we have seen vaccines work through the work of Bill Gates and his Foundation.  This is a great goal by all means.  It’s not only Ebola but we have a lot of other needs as well, but Ebola right now is in the hot seat and for good reason.  We don’t know if Ebola would have received a decent enough share of what the NIH funds, but we do know one thing, the cutting of their budgets has had an adverse effect.  Private industry only develops research and drugs to make money and there’s nothing wrong with that but we need both as sometimes you need to be doing it for the “Good” and not “The Good Money” as the models of what populations need don’t always fit that profit thinking parameters. 

CDC found their “models” for Ebola protocol were also missing targets and this is not to blame at this point but a model is a model and your never know how it works until it plays out in the real world.  We have a lot of folks out there who has lost touch with the “real” world too, buried in analytics with the dire hope in hell they “might” find some tiny element of data with value.  That’s ok for medical research and the genomics field as that “is” their business, but it is not the “business of running a business” and that’s what we have evolved to with complexities coming out our ears in not being able to function.  Everything needs a reboot and when the servers are down, we still need to be able to fall back on what we know best and what works as humans.

We live in some pretty fantastic times with what we are doing with technology as well and again that creates the confusion as to what’s real and what’s Memorex at times as well.  Add on some goofy media news that everyone reads loaded with stats and numbers and the confusion with the virtual world and the real world values grows even further. 

The last time we saw any unity with members of Congress joining together was to bail out the banks and we all know now what a “jewel” we got stuck with there and again that was for “The Good Money” and not “The Good” and we are paying for it now over and over as those talented with mathematical skills use them to move and make money and they are still doing it for “The Good Money” and not for “The Good”.  I don’t know if we can ever get back to doing things for “The Good” but I hope so as long as some of those working only for the “Good Money” might come to their senses. 

I tried at one point to get some interest in taxing the data sellers as well as licensing them to generate some funds for the NIH but nobody understood it a couple years ago and today it’s monster of companies that sell personal data of ours “For The Good Money”, not for our good.  Today we’re beyond that for the most part and know that banks and many corporations don’t even know how to do something “For The Good” anymore without expecting a return of some sorts.  Ebola is testing that right now to see where the “Good” folks are. 

One More Good Reason to Tax the Data Sellers– Create Additional Funding for the NIH and FDA From Sources That Otherwise Are Too Greedy to Share & Contribute

It is Ebola that is bringing the US to their knees like it or not. 

Sadly It’s Ebola That’s Bringing the US Kicking and Screaming, To Our Knees–We Must Deal With the Real World Solutions, Not Virtual World Values This Time as They Won’t Work…

So tomorrow the news will be full of both Congressmen, the White House, NIH, CDC and a few others working to find where the blame fits and the reality is it’s all of them.  We have too many folks that consume themselves and live in “virtual worlds” today that confused those values with the “real” world.  Ebola is the real world and doctors live in the “real” world, and there’s a name for it: patients. 

You can’t bribe Ebola, give it kickbacks, etc. the things that folks do in the virtual world so this time everyone needs to hopefully subscribe to finally doing something “Really for the Good” and not just for “The Good Money” only.  BD 


Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said the agency has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. “It’s not like we suddenly woke up and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'” Collins told the Huffington Post. “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”

Collins said researchers and doctors would likely have been “a year or two ahead of where we are” had research funding stayed on track.

http://time.com/3501744/ebola-vaccine-nih/

1 comments :

  1. I read this too, in the loathsome b-( HuffPost. I regularly use our fine NLM and Pubmed, but the NIH is being irresponsible in saying that we would have had an Ebola vaccine by now if not for Republicans/ neoliberals/ BigPharma etc. Those facile over-simplifications decrease NIH credibility.

    Miz Duck, I cannot agree with you more vehemently about the NIH Stupid App Tricks (my name for them) that you referred to in your post. Talk about wasting money... sheesh :o I hope multiple emoticons won't trigger your sp4m velocity algorithms, As for quantification-afilia and techno-utopians, well, I am of the same mind as you about THAT too. It is no panacea. Nothing ever is, other than Pasteur, Salk and a very few of that tiny group of human (not computational!) near-miracle (p) workers.

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