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Why Cancer Researchers Are Playing it Safe

Long-shots are risky to fund, so grants go to less ambitious studies

By Katherine Thompson, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 28, 2009 12:40 PM CDT

(Newser) – If you're a cancer researcher, it's harder to get money to investigate a potentially field-changing question than to find out whether a food's tastiness affects dieting. The reason is simple but problematic: With limited funding available and lots of research to do, grant-givers don't want to lose money on a long shot, writes the New York Times.

But the risky studies often lead to breakthroughs, like the drug that has saved the lives of women with particularly aggressive breast cancer. Its discoverer had to turn to a cosmetics company for money because his official grant proposal was rejected. The projects that are funded "are not silly, but they are only likely to produce incremental progress," a scientist explains.

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Despite all the support for cancer research from celebs like Fran Drescher and Sharon Osbourne, doctors aren't able to save very many more people now than they were several decades ago. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, file)

Checks Unlimited has raised more than $157,000 for breast cancer research. While funding is critical, so is a willingness to give money to long-shot studies that might produce a breakthrough. (Photo: Deluxe Corporation)

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The system probably provides disincentives to funding really transformative research. - Dr. Raynard S. Kington, acting director of the National Institutes of Health

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fancygapva

Jun 29, 2009 5:26 AM CDT

A few days ago there was a story of shocked and surprised researchers who used a med that was supposed to slow down an aggressive prostate cancer in terminally ill men. Seems it eradicated the cancer and it was still gone 18 months later after the subjects were supposed to have died. SHOCK! a medication that actually cured something and apparently the side effects weren't worse than the disease it cured--unlike most meds today. Hey! If your lashes aren't long enough There's an ap for that.

Mad

Jun 28, 2009 9:40 AM CDT

Big Pharm isn't looking to cure anyone, as you pointed out there is little money in that. Developing maintenance drugs that ease some of your symptoms but not quite heal you are the real money makers

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breast cancer • science • cancer research • funding • cancer drug • scientific funding • women's issues

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Why Cancer Researchers Are Playing it Safe