Obvious cancer treatment aside, I'm amazed about the possibilities for treating allergies. Sure, allergies might not seem as big a deal, but with the last few American generations having to deal with - what seems like a crazy increase in manifestations - from mild nasal/environmental allergies all the way to severe, deadly anaphylaxis-type (such as vs. peanut and other food) allergies...I sure hope this area of research gets tons of money thrown in.
Don't mean to get political, but when many U.S. administrations talk of throwing billions towards military weapons, but nowhere near as much towards positive research like this, it just gets me frustrated. (Caveat: I do understand and support some types of military research that lead to positive technologies such as GPS, etc. I'm referring to governments spending billions on stupid projects like the F-35 joint strike jet fighter.)
Anyway, kudos and hearty congrats to the Nobel winners!
> Don't mean to get political, but when many U.S. administrations talk of throwing billions towards military weapons, but nowhere near as much towards positive research like this, it just gets me frustrated.
I picked up an adage from an old engineer once:
“It doesn’t matter how many men or how much money you have, it still takes 9 months to make a baby”.
I do agree that science is underfunded, but sometimes money isn’t the problem, things just take time.
It strikes me that the "9 months to make a baby" applies much more to Engineering than it does to Research Science.
There are a ton of areas of research that we know will yield a lot of future benefit but since the NIH is actually funded at a lower inflation-adjusted rate compared to 15 years ago [1], the research is held up greatly. Grants to young scientists are diminishing and many promising researchers are leaving the field.
Building a bridge is a serial process, studying the metallurgy of hundreds of compounds is massively parallel.
> From FY 2003 to 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lost 22% of its capacity to fund research due to budget cuts, sequestration, and inflationary losses.
It quite often is actually. Until today, about half of all human genes have never been described in any detail at all. We do not know what function they serve, only that they exist and that most of those are probably not that important. Therefore no early career scientist can really dare to investigate any of them, if they do not certainly want to endanger their future careers. If they would have not worry about that, a lot of bright minds that now only study those 5% of genes that promise the most interesting results could diverge and with a high probability discover a new PD-1 here and CTLA4 there. And thats not a question of time (besides the maybe 10 years to study a gene well), that is 100% a problem of funding.
It's not a 100% fit to your point, but there's that old bromide that half of $[stuff] is $[good in some way] and half is $[bad], but we don't know which is which.
> Don't mean to get political, but when many U.S. administrations talk of throwing billions towards military weapons, but nowhere near as much towards positive research like this, it just gets me frustrated.
The US benefits much more from developing cutting-edge weaponry than a cure for a deadly but rare health problem. It should be noted that military programs like the F35 involve both research in many fields of hard science and engineering, and generates demand for highly technical and highly specialized areas of expertise.
These military programs may not cure cancer but improve the lives of a whole lot of people within the US.
The US benefits probably far less from developing cutting-edge weaponry than from curing a deadly but rare health problem that kills a couple of hundred thousand people each year.
It should be noted that scientific programs like cancer immuno therapy involve both research in many fields of hard science and engineering, and generates demand for highly technical and highly specialized areas of expertise.
These scientific programs may not result in the next GPS but improve the lives of a whole lot of people (directly through treatment and indirectly through being paid) within the US.
Don't mean to get political, but when many U.S. administrations talk of throwing billions towards military weapons, but nowhere near as much towards positive research like this, it just gets me frustrated. (Caveat: I do understand and support some types of military research that lead to positive technologies such as GPS, etc. I'm referring to governments spending billions on stupid projects like the F-35 joint strike jet fighter.)
Anyway, kudos and hearty congrats to the Nobel winners!