President Biden will give more information on his plan to end cancer. The 60th anniversary of President Kennedy's famous speech about putting a man on the moon will be used by the president to create a new agency. Dr. Renee Wegrzyn will be the leader of the new agency.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health seems to need an entirely new agency to cure cancer, despite the fact that the National Cancer Institute gets $7 billion a year. In 2016 when then-Vice President Biden first proposed the idea, the concerns were obvious.
During this week's State of the Union address, President Obama announced that his Vice President, Joe Biden, will lead a new science "moonshot" to end cancer. This will increase resources devoted to fighting cancer and break down barriers that prevent sharing of information among cancer researchers according to an article posted by the vice president.
AdvertisementThe Speaker of the House failed to clap at this, which was pointed out by the snarkier commentators on the internet. It seems like more funding for cancer research would be a good idea. It's a bad idea.
Let me tell you a bit about where this editorial is coming from. It might be hard to understand why the car editor at a technology website is complaining about science funding, but before moving to Ars full time in June last year, I worked in a policy office at the National Institute of Health.
My opinion is informed by over a decade of experience in the trenches, and a straw poll of friends and colleagues shows that I am not off-base. Everyone I know works in advocacy. Here's how it's going to go
Science doesn't need another moonshot, and it really doesn't need another vaguely thought-out initiative dropped on it during a State of the Union address. What it needs is more important than what it needs to be popular. Science needs a stable budget. For a number of years, promise to grow the budget at a percentage or two above inflation. It would be a good number.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
