the $cience of hope

^ NOVA: Personal Genome Project explores the lifesaving possibilities of genetics, the research of which may one day prevent deadly diseases like diabetes and heart attacks.

Scientists Hope Stimulus Will Give Jolt To Research | NPR

Bad Economy Could Affect Future Of Science

The impact could fall hard on individuals like [Anirvan Ghosh's postdoctoral candidate, Stefanie Otto, who attends the University of California San Diego]. But they also can affect the future of science in the United States. Ghosh thinks of both as he looks to the stimulus package to provide his lab — and many others like it — some relief.

"Being able to provide some support right now has an immediate effect in stabilizing the positions of postdocs and graduate students and research scientists now so they don't leave the system," he says. "But in the long run, as we look forward with our regular budgets, one has to think of ways in which this can be sustained."

That's actually the bigger challenge. Sure, labs are eager to get a two-year infusion of cash under the terms of the stimulus package. But if the money disappears just as quickly, labs will be back in trouble again. The NIH's Kington says they're trying to be careful to avoid that hangover.

"The greater the flexibility we're given in the legislation, the more options we have to plan so that we don't have a problem two years down the road," Kington says.

What many textbook Republicans, and especially those figureheads in the Bush administration, failed to realize is that the very institutions that they shat on with apathy in lack of funding in the past decade could have made great strides in such fields as stem cell research, environmental research, and biotechnology. It also helps foster education and a culture of learning and inquiry and who knows how many kids whose inner fire it may ignite that one day they may be authors in curing diseases their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, or friends once suffered or died from.

Let's just hope money will finally arrive.....and continue to arrive.

I posted my own thoughts in the readers' comment section of the above NPR story:

This is disheartening to hear, the possibility of scientific research not getting enough funding by us.

I mean, part of why progress has been made to combat HIV/AIDS is credited to government spending - OUR money being spent on it. This is far, far closer to home for me than you think. Some of my friends have HIV and of course, many of us also suffer from cancer, Parkinson's disease, and other potentially lethal ailments.

Any funding towards scientific research is a chance at lifesaving treatment, or possibly even a cure one day.