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While I respect the work you're doing I reject the premise that I want my tax dollars to go to anything. I don't want the government funding research at all. Mo

While I respect the work you're doing I reject the premise that I want my tax dollars to go to anything. I don't want the government funding research at all. Most government research goes to defense research anyway so even if non-defense research is helpful I'd rather throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak. Most work needs to be profitable to happen or it's done by people who just work in their spare time. That's been a consistent part of progress for a long time now. I don't need to have an opinion about evolution to not want the government to fund research.

jballanc 17y ago
I respect your opinion, but I must respectfully disagree that the government should have no role in funding research. Certainly, the current system of public funding is not perfect, but market driven research is no panacea. Take, as a case study, the pharmaceutical industry. Research into new pharmaceuticals is almost entirely market driven. This goes a long way to explaining why a program to develop a medication reducing the damage caused by heart attacks was more-or-less shut down after it was discovered that one of their candidate molecules gave men erections. Why spend more money to cure heart attacks, when old men will pay $10/pill for what you've already got? It also explains why we have a plethora of statins on the market today to fight high cholesterol, a disease of primarily affluent nations, and not even so much as promising drug candidates to fight the plethora of neglected diseases afflicting the poor nations of Africa. Finally, and probably most scarily, it explains why there hasn't been any serious research into antibiotics in the last couple decades. Everyone expects antibiotics to be cheap, and they'll only take them for a week or two. Statins are covered by insurance and you have to take them for a lifetime... ...so I hope you can take comfort in the ideal of market driven research when Vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus becomes prevalent in the community and we haven't developed any new antibiotics to treat it...because where's the profit in that?
- jswinghammer 17y ago
  That of course is the thinking I've heard many times on this topic but there are treatments for rarer diseases being produced all the time. Drugs of any sufficient demand yield huge profits and often times drugs that you research for one reason turn into a drug for something totally different and drug companies know that better than I do. I'd rather have the market direct this and let consumers be the final judge on what gets researched. If you use government for what you consider good then you open up the possibility for it to be used for what you consider evil. I'd rather just eliminate the option and avoid that issue altogether.

jballanc 17y ago

I respect your opinion, but I must respectfully disagree that the government should have no role in funding research. Certainly, the current system of public funding is not perfect, but market driven research is no panacea. Take, as a case study, the pharmaceutical industry. Research into new pharmaceuticals is almost entirely market driven. This goes a long way to explaining why a program to develop a medication reducing the damage caused by heart attacks was more-or-less shut down after it was discovered that one of their candidate molecules gave men erections. Why spend more money to cure heart attacks, when old men will pay $10/pill for what you've already got? It also explains why we have a plethora of statins on the market today to fight high cholesterol, a disease of primarily affluent nations, and not even so much as promising drug candidates to fight the plethora of neglected diseases afflicting the poor nations of Africa. Finally, and probably most scarily, it explains why there hasn't been any serious research into antibiotics in the last couple decades. Everyone expects antibiotics to be cheap, and they'll only take them for a week or two. Statins are covered by insurance and you have to take them for a lifetime... ...so I hope you can take comfort in the ideal of market driven research when Vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus becomes prevalent in the community and we haven't developed any new antibiotics to treat it...because where's the profit in that?

jswinghammer 17y ago
That of course is the thinking I've heard many times on this topic but there are treatments for rarer diseases being produced all the time. Drugs of any sufficient demand yield huge profits and often times drugs that you research for one reason turn into a drug for something totally different and drug companies know that better than I do. I'd rather have the market direct this and let consumers be the final judge on what gets researched. If you use government for what you consider good then you open up the possibility for it to be used for what you consider evil. I'd rather just eliminate the option and avoid that issue altogether.