MEDICAL RESEARCH—The Program of the U. S. Public Health Service

Federal Government expenditures for medical research have increased apace in the last ten years. The increase in federal research funds has stimulated support from private sources; contributions from other than federal sources have doubled.More than half of medical research funds are being used by universities, hospitals, and other nonprofit institutions, and less than one-fourth by laboratories of the Federal Government.Grants-in-aid of research, fellowships and extended training are made on the advice of Advisory Councils made up of leaders in the various research fields. The previous record of research by staffs and faculties of institutions is taken into account. Special attention is given to unknown investigators and small projects.Noninterference with a scientist in the conduct of research is a basic principle of all grants. He may change the direction of his research to pursue promising leads without asking permission.Continuity of grants so that promising projects need not be abandoned at the end of a grant period is given special consideration.     

Why Are There So Many Waterfowl and So Few Northern Bobwhites? Rethinking Federal Coordination

In this paper we ask whether we should we re-examine the future of upland gamebird management and greater federal oversight and partnerships in the twenty-first century. Management for waterfowl in North America has been successful because of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) and the subsequent 1986 North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP). Although the MBTA included most migratory and non-migratory species, upland gamebirds, including the northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus; bobwhite), were excluded and retained under state control. Although many waterfowl populations have been increasing, bobwhite populations have declined precipitously during much of the period. Excluding non-migratory gamebirds from the MBTA meant that the multistate coordinating efforts that made the MBTA successful for increasing the management of waterfowl have not been applied. The National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI) has made a strong effort to unite states within the bobwhite range but does not have the federal anchoring and financial support that were given to states by the MBTA and NAWMP and currently integrate adaptive harvest, habitat management, and financial partnerships to acquire and manage wetlands that support waterfowl production. The NBCI Coordinated Implementation Program (CIP) is designed to serve the function of developing and monitoring habitat for bobwhites but is entirely voluntary and dependent entirely on state and non-governmental organization (NGO) funds, lacking federal grants and Federal Duck Stamp funds. To catch up with the successes of waterfowl, we discuss the implications of increasing coordination, partnerships, and funding mechanisms between the federal government, state governments, and NGOs to provide common landscape-level population monitoring and modeling, adaptive harvest regulations, habitat management goals, and a national upland gamebird stamp. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.     

The search for plant precursors of cortisone

The subterranean tubers of Mexican yams have superseded the seed of African Strophanthus vines as the most promising vegetable source of components commercially convertible into cortisone. This arthritis-combatting drug is still manufactured primarily from bile acids of cattle, but intense efforts are being made to find suitable plant sources. In this article four of the U. S. Government scientists engaged in this work describe what is being done in this direction under Federal auspices.     

Aspects of audit. 4: Acceptability of audit.

Whether or not audit is accepted in Britain will be determined principally by how it is controlled, how much it costs, and how effective it is. The objectives of audit have been defined as education, planning, evaluation, research, and anticipatory diplomacy--that is, starting internal audit before external audit is imposed on the medical profession. Published reports suggest that in Britain internal audit would be more effective andless expensive than the complex professional standards review organisation devised by the Federal Government in the United States.     

Monitoring activities in the Federal Republic of Germany pursuant to international conventions and national legislation

The main activities of the Federal Republic of Germany regarding the monitoring of the pollution of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea are described. Reference is also made to research projects concerned with the investigation of the processes of transportation and transformation of harmful substances in the marine ecosystem. Political conclusions drawn by the Federal Government are mentioned. Environmental protection measures are only dealt with marginally; combatting measures are not dealt with. Presented at the VI International Wadden Sea Symposium (Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, Wattenmeerstation Sylt, D-2282 List, FRG, 1–4 November 1988)     

Radiation Protection in Canada: Part V. Radiobiological and Radiological Health Research in Canada

A recent survey was carried out with respect to radiobiological and radiological health projects in Canada. Letters of inquiry, followed by two questionnaires, were sent out to every institution where radiation research was likely to have been undertaken. Approximately 75% of those contacted replied. Of the total of 200 studies, 84% were classified as biological and medical studies, the remaining 16% as environmental radiation studies. Responses to the inquiry stressed the inadequacy of the present governmental budget for radiation research, the need for higher salaries for research workers, and the necessity of a more intensive teaching program for technicians and professional personnel. The granting of longer-term grants, rather than annually renewable grants, is urged.     

Pioneering Interdisciplinary Research Initiatives for Oceans and Human Health

Following the release of the report From Monsoons to Microbes by the National Research Council in 1999, efforts began to promote federal sponsorship of research and education in a new scientific discipline focusing on how the ocean affects human health. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated a joint program to establish and sustain several research Centers for Oceans and Human Health (COHH) at nonfederal institutions. Shortly thereafter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mounted a similar initiative to establish intramural centers at existing NOAA facilities as well as an extramural grants program. This profile reviews the history and current state of these developments. The statements and opinions in this report are those of the authors only and do not necessarily represent the position of, or imply commitments by, any agency of the United States Government.     

Methods for structuring scientific knowledge from many areas related to aging research

Aging and age-related disease represents a substantial quantity of current natural, social and behavioral science research efforts. Presently, no centralized system exists for tracking aging research projects across numerous research disciplines. The multidisciplinary nature of this research complicates the understanding of underlying project categories, the establishment of project relations, and the development of a unified project classification scheme. We have developed a highly visual database, the International Aging Research Portfolio (IARP), available at AgingPortfolio.org to address this issue. The database integrates information on research grants, peer-reviewed publications, and issued patent applications from multiple sources. Additionally, the database uses flexible project classification mechanisms and tools for analyzing project associations and trends. This system enables scientists to search the centralized project database, to classify and categorize aging projects, and to analyze the funding aspects across multiple research disciplines. The IARP is designed to provide improved allocation and prioritization of scarce research funding, to reduce project overlap and improve scientific collaboration thereby accelerating scientific and medical progress in a rapidly growing area of research. Grant applications often precede publications and some grants do not result in publications, thus, this system provides utility to investigate an earlier and broader view on research activity in many research disciplines. This project is a first attempt to provide a centralized database system for research grants and to categorize aging research projects into multiple subcategories utilizing both advanced machine algorithms and a hierarchical environment for scientific collaboration.     

Ecology of Infectious Disease: Forging an Alliance

The Ecology of Infectious Diseases (EID) program is a joint National Science Foundation–National Institutes of Health initiative to produce predictive understanding of disease dynamics, with a focus on diseases with an environmental component. The interdisciplinary research projects funded by this program take advantage of the wide range of theoretical and methodological advances developed over the past 30 years. The challenge for disease ecology is to unravel these systems, discover how complex they truly are, and to determine if they can be predicted and controlled using targeted environmental, public health, or medical interventions. Between 1999 and 2005, a total of 42 research awards were made under the EID program. EID projects have had affects on policy in two areas: adoption of novel interventions on a local scale and use of models by government agencies for the purpose of allocating public health resources. The past 6 years have been an exciting time for the field of disease ecology; we expect the coming years to be even more exciting and productive. As US federal government employees writing an article as part of our official duties, copyright of all publications is retained by the US government. The views expressed here by Samuel M. Scheiner and Joshua P. Rosenthal are those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, or the United States Government.     

Big Science vs. Little Science: How Scientific Impact Scales with Funding

Agencies that fund scientific research must choose: is it more effective to give large grants to a few elite researchers, or small grants to many researchers? Large grants would be more effective only if scientific impact increases as an accelerating function of grant size. Here, we examine the scientific impact of individual university-based researchers in three disciplines funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). We considered four indices of scientific impact: numbers of articles published, numbers of citations to those articles, the most cited article, and the number of highly cited articles, each measured over a four-year period. We related these to the amount of NSERC funding received. Impact is positively, but only weakly, related to funding. Researchers who received additional funds from a second federal granting council, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, were not more productive than those who received only NSERC funding. Impact was generally a decelerating function of funding. Impact per dollar was therefore lower for large grant-holders. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that larger grants lead to larger discoveries. Further, the impact of researchers who received increases in funding did not predictably increase. We conclude that scientific impact (as reflected by publications) is only weakly limited by funding. We suggest that funding strategies that target diversity, rather than “excellence”, are likely to prove to be more productive.     

Science for medicine--time for another reappraisal.

The Amendments to the National Cancer Act of 1974 included a provision for a comprehensive review of the Federal policies and programs for medical research. This would appear to be a particularly timely review since many of the fundamental issues concerning the Government's role in biomedical research are presently in question. These issues include the rationale for public support for basic medical research, public expectations for returns on these investments, establishment of priorities among various research avenues, and a number of derivative as well as ethical questions. Since the professional and scientific communities have been historically successful in gaining public funds for research, a periodic opportunity for public review and consideration would appear to be highly desirable.     

Program oversight enhancements (POE): the big PAM

Federal animal welfare regulations and policies require compliance during animal research. But the methods used to oversee, assess, and ascertain compliance are left in the hands of the research institution and its institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC). Differences in institutional cultures, research goals, individuals responsible for animal care and use activities and oversight, and availability of financial and personnel resources have given rise to a variety of institution-specific mechanisms for ensuring compliance with the federal requirements and specifically with IACUC-approved animal research activities. In recent years one such mechanism, postapproval monitoring (PAM), has risen in popularity. An often cited topic in animal welfare-related conferences and periodicals, it is well on its way to becoming a compliance standard. However, it is but one mechanism for ensuring postapproval compliance and is not required by the federal animal welfare regulations. In this article we describe alternative mechanisms for ensuring compliance with IACUC-approved animal research through the use of program oversight enhancements (POE) in the context of an institution's animal care and use program. We present these enhancements in a way that allows readers to pick and choose those of interest. While these methods may not be feasible at all institutions, adopting even a few should improve a program's ability to ensure compliance with approved animal research and reduce the need for an aggressive and formal postapproval monitoring process.     

U.S. Federal Initiatives to Support Biomass Research and Development

This article provides a brief overview of federal initiatives in the United States to support biomass research, demonstration, and development. The interest in the biomass industry and U.S. federal efforts to spur development of, increased production of, and use of biopower, biofuels, and biobased products, collectively known as the "biomass industry", are discussed. A growing level of leadership from the executive branch of the federal government and support by the U.S. Congress are documented. Five important policy drivers that support this heightened emphasis on biomass for power, fuels, and products are identified and discussed. The current status of U.S. dependence on these renewable energy sources is briefly outlined. Federal biomass funding activity for the current fiscal year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy, two major federal participants in research, demonstration, and development for this industry, is briefly outlined. This funding commitment is placed into an overall context of total federal support for all research and development. Finally, the article suggests future market penetration targets for this industry, emphasizes the importance of infrastructure development necessary to support the industry's growth, and notes the payoff from such development for farmers, foresters, rural communities, and the environment.     

Medical fund took off like a rocket,but will budget bring it down to earth?

In 18 months the Canadian Medical Discoveries Fund (CMDF) has attracted investments worth $180 million to spend on biotechnology and medical research. Although eight initial investments totalled only $9.7 million, Dr. Cal Stiller, chair and CEO of the fund''s management corporation, says there are many good Canadian-based technology firms and research projects that merit investment. Examples include a London, Ont., firm that is bringing a 3-D ultrasound-imaging system to market, and world-class genetics research at the University of Ottawa. However, the federal government recently changed tax rules for venture-capital funds, making them less attractive to investors. How will this affect the effort to build a health-research industry in Canada?     

PROFITS AND PLAGIARISM: THE CASE OF MEDICAL GHOSTWRITING

This paper focuses on medical ghostwriting in the United States. I argue that medical ghostwriting often involves plagiarism and, in those cases, can be treated as an act of research misconduct by both the federal government and research institutions. I also propose several anti‐ghostwriting measures, including: 1) journals should implement guarantor policies so that researchers may be better held accountable for their work; 2) research institutions and the federal government should explicitly prohibit medical ghostwriting and outline appropriate penalties; and 3) a publicly available database should be created to record researchers' ethics violations.     

Presidential Address 1988 After the first 200 years: The future of ecology and ecologists in Australia

This Address examines the current concerns of ecologists. There is instability in the organization of science at a political level, in funding bodies, and in organizations such as CSIRO and tertiary education institutions. There is less funding for research and development in Australia than in other developed countries, mainly because of poor funding from the private sector, and funds available to the new Australian Research Council are small in relation to applications for support. These factors affect career opportunities for ecologists, although students continue to be attracted to the area. The state of the Australian environment leaves much to be desired, with widespread land degradation (including erosion and salination), deterioration in water quality, and disease in natural ecosystems; many species are endangered, and there is concern about forest management. Widespread environmental problems occur despite the fact that, for more than a century, those concerned with land management have been educated in tertiary institutions. More might be done to equip graduates better for solving Australian problems, for informing the public about methods which can be used to correct environmental degradation, and for disseminating research results more directly to managers. While all scientists should emphasize the importance of basic research, it is argued that more recognition should be given to the application of science to management. Among positive aspect of the present climate are a government commitment to increase numbers in senior school years and in tertiary institutions; entry of graduates into consulting work; use of conservation strategies to enhance interaction between ecology and industry as illustrated by mining, agriculture and forestry; increased activity by organizations which raise funds from the private sector; definition of research priorities; and the identification which Australians have with an image of the countryside. With this framework of closer links between ecology, practical problem-solving, and support from industry and the private sector, it is argued that significant progress will be made in the years ahead.     

中国国家自然科学基金对兽类学研究的资助

中国国家自然科学基金自1986年设立以来对我国兽类学研究给予了大力支持,但对其具体资助情况及其对我国兽类学发展的影响不是十分清楚,为此,对国家自然科学基金委员会生命科学部1986年以来所资助有关兽类学研究项目进行了统计分析。这些项目主要包括面上项目,重点项目,重大项目和其它专项基金项目如国家杰出青年基金项目,地区基金项目以及高技术项目等,分析结果表明,动物学科共资助有关兽类学研究的面上项目,重点项目,重大项目等131项（占学科总项目数的21.98%),总计1361.9万元（占学科总经费数的29.60%);生态学科总计资助上述各类项目49项、536.8万元（分别占学科总数的7.47%和7.09%),遗传学科动物遗传学总计资助上述各类项目39项,311.1万元,动物学科是我国开展兽类学研究的主要资助之一,生态学和动物遗传学资助有关兽类学研究项目的增加,反映了传统的兽类学研究与生态学,遗传学的结合和交叉,根据上述结果对国家自然科学基金在我国兽类学发展历程中的关键作用及其对我国兽类学发展趋势的影响进行了讨论。     

Reefer Madness: Legal & Moral Issues Surrounding the Medical Prescription of Marijuana

California, Arizona, and several other states have recently legalized medical marijuana. My goal in this paper is to demonstrate that even if one grants the opponents of legalization many of their contentious assumptions, the federal government is still obligated to take several specific steps toward the legalization of medical marijuana. I defend this claim against a variety of objections, including the claims: that marijuana is unsafe, that marijuana cannot be adequately tested or produced as a drug, that the availability of synthetic THC makes marijuana superfluous, and especially that legalizing medical marijuana will increase recreational use by 'sending the wrong message '. I then go on to argue that given the intransigent position of the federal government on this issue, state governments are justified in unilaterally legalizing medical marijuana as an act of civil disobedience.
A large portion of this paper consists of an extensive response to the objection that legalizing medical marijuana will 'send the wrong message '– which I take to be the primary impediment to legalization. This objection basically claims that the consequences of withholding legalization (especially preventing increased recreational use) are superior to those of legalizing medical marijuana. I argue that legalization is justified even if one were to grant both that the harms of legalization outweighed its benefits and that utilitarianism is true. This requires a subtle and somewhat extended discussion of utilitarian moral and political theory.     

Facing the credit crunch. Politics sends mixed messages for science in the wake of the global financial crisis

The global response to the credit crunch has varied from belt tightening to spending sprees. Philip Hunter investigates how various countries react to the financial crisis in terms of supporting scientific research.The overall state of biomedical research in the wake of the global financial crisis remains unclear amid growing concern that competition for science funding is compromising the pursuit of research. Such concerns pre-date the credit crunch, but there is a feeling that an increasing amount of time and energy is being wasted in the ongoing scramble for grants, in the face of mounting pressure from funding agencies demanding value for money. Another problem is balancing funding between different fields; while the biomedical sciences have generally fared well, they are increasingly dependent on basic research in physics and chemistry that are in greater jeopardy. This has led to calls for rebalancing funding, in order to ensure the long-term viability of all fields in an increasingly multidisciplinary and collaborative research world.For countries that are cutting funding—such as Spain, Italy and the UK—the immediate priority is to preserve the fundamental research base and avoid a significant drain of expertise, either to rival countries or away from science altogether. This has highlighted the plight of postdoctoral researchers who have traditionally been the first to suffer from funding cuts, partly because they have little immediate impact on on a country''s scientific competitiveness. Postdocs have been the first to go whenever budgets have been cut, according to Richard Frankel, a physicist at California Polytechnic State University in Saint Luis Obispo, who investigates magnetotaxis in bacteria. “In the short term there will be little effect but the long-term effects can be devastating,” he said.…there is a feeling that an increasing amount of time and energy is being wasted in the ongoing scramble for grants, in the face of mounting pressure from funding agencies…According to Peter Stadler, head of a bioinformatics group at the University of Leipzig in Germany, such cuts tend to cause the long-term erosion of a country''s science skills base. “Short-term cuts in science funding translate totally into a brain drain, since they predominantly affect young researchers who are paid from the soft money that is drying up first,” said Stadler. “They either leave science, an irreversible step, or move abroad but do not come back later, because the medium-term effect of cuts is a reduction in career opportunities and fiercer competition giving those already in the system a big advantage.”Even when young researchers are not directly affected, the prevailing culture of short-term funding—which requires ongoing grant applications—can be disruptive, according to Xavier Salvatella, principal investigator in the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, Spain. “I do not think the situation is dramatic but too much time is indeed spent writing proposals,” he commented. “Because success rates are decreasing, the time devoted to raise funds to run the lab necessarily needs to increase.”At the University of Adelaide in Australia, Andrew Somogyi, professor of pharmacology, thinks that the situation is serious: “[M]y postdocs would spend about half their time applying for grants.” Somogyi pointed out that the success rate has been declining in Australia, as it has in some other countries. “For ARC [Australian Research Council] the success rate is now close to 20%, which means many excellent projects don''t get funding because the assessment is now so fine cut,” he said.Similar developments have taken place in the USA at both the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which provides US$16 billion funding per year and the American Cancer Society (ACS), the country''s largest private non-profit funder of cancer research, with a much smaller pot of US$120 million per year. The NIH funded 21% of research proposals submitted to it in 2009, compared with 32% a decade earlier, while the ACS approves only 15% of grant applications, down several percentage points over the past few years.While the NIH is prevented by federal law from allowing observers in to its grant review meetings, the ACS did allow a reporter from Nature to attend one of its sessions on the condition that the names of referees and the applications themselves were not revealed (Powell, 2010). The general finding was that while the review process works well when around 30% of proposals are successful, it tends to break down as the success rate drops, as more arbitrary decisions are made and the risk of strong pitches being rejected increases. This can also discourage the best people from being reviewers because the process becomes more tiring and time-consuming.Even when young researchers are not directly affected, the prevailing culture of short-term funding—which requires ongoing grant applications—can be disruptive…In some countries, funding shortfalls are also leading to the loss of permanent jobs, for example in the UK where finance minister George Osborne announced on October 20 that the science budget would be frozen at £4.6 billion, rather than cut as had been expected. Even so, combined with the cut in funding for universities that was announced on the same day, this raises the prospect of reductions in academic staff numbers, which could affect research projects. This follows several years of increasing funding for UK science. Such uncertainty is damaging, according to Cornelius Gross, deputy head of the mouse biology unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Monterotondo, Italy. “Large fluctuations in funding have been shown to cause damage beyond their direct magnitude as can be seen in the US where the Clinton boom was inevitably followed by a slowdown that led to rapid and extreme tightening of budgets,” he said.Some countries are aware of these dangers and have acted to protect budgets and, in some cases, even increase spending. A report by the OECD argued that countries and companies that boosted research and development spending during the ‘creative destruction'' of an economic downturn tended to gain ground on their competitors and emerge from the crisis in a relatively stronger position (OECD, 2009). This was part of the rationale of the US stimulus package, which was intended to provide an immediate lift to the economy and has been followed by a slight increase in funding. The NIH''s budget is set to increase by $1 billion, or 3% from 2010 to 2011, reaching just over $32 billion. This looks like a real-term increase, since inflation in the USA is now between 1 and 2%. However, there are fears that budgets will soon be cut; even now the small increase at the Federal level is being offset by cuts in state support, according to Mike Seibert, research fellow at the US Department of Energy''s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “The stimulus funds are disappearing in the US, and the overall budget for science may be facing a correction at the national level as economic, budget, and national debt issues are addressed,” he said. “The states in most cases are suffering their own budget crises and will be cutting back on anything that is not nailed down.”…countries and companies that boosted research and development spending during the ‘creative destruction'' of an economic downturn tended to gain ground on their competitors…In Germany, the overall funding situation is also confused by a split between the Federal and 16 state governments, each of which has its own budget for science. In contrast to many other countries though, both federal and state governments have responded boldly to the credit crisis by increasing the total budget for the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)—Germany''s largest research funding agency—to €2.3 billion in 2011. Moreover, total funding for research and education from the BMBF (Federal Ministry for Education and Research) is expected to increase by another 7% from €10.9 billion in 2010 to €11.64 billion, although the overall federal budget is set to shrink by 3.8% under Germany''s austerity measures (Anon, 2010). There have also been increases in funding from non-government sources, such as the Fraunhofer Society, Europe''s largest application-oriented research organization, which has an annual budget of €1.6 billion.The German line has been strongly applauded by the European Union, which since 2007 has channelled its funding for cutting-edge research through the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC''s current budget of €7.5 billion, which runs until 2013, was set in 2007 and negotiations for the next period have not yet begun, but the ERC''s executive agency director Jack Metthey has indicated that it will be increased: “The Commission will firmly sustain in the negotiations the view that research and innovation, central to the Europe 2020 Strategy agreed by the Member States, should be a top budgetary priority.” Metthey also implied that governments cutting funding, as the UK had been planning to do, were making a false economy that would gain only in the short term. “Situations vary at the national level but the European Commission believes that governments should maintain and even increase research and innovation investments during difficult times, because these are pro-growth, anti-crisis investments,” he said.Many other countries have to cope with flat or declining science budgets; some are therefore exploring ways in which to do more with less. In Japan, for instance, money has been concentrated on larger projects and fewer scientists, with the effect of intensifying the grant application process. Since 2002, the total Japanese government budget for science and technology has remained flat at around ¥3,500 billion—or €27 billion at current exchange rates—with a 1% annual decline in university support but increased funding for projects considered to be of high value to the economy. This culminated in March 2010 with the launch of the ¥100 billion (€880 million) programme for World Leading Innovative Research and Development on Science and Technology.But such attempts to make funding more competitive or focus it on specific areas could have unintended side effects on innovation and risk taking. One side effect can be favouring scientists who may be less creative but good at attracting grants, according to Roger Butlin, evolutionary biologist at the University of Sheffield in the UK. “Some productive staff are being targeted because they do not bring in grants, so money is taking precedence over output,” said Butlin. “This is very dangerous if it results in loss of good theoreticians or data specialists, especially as the latter will be a critical group in the coming years.”“Scientists are usually very energetic when they can pursue their own ideas and less so when the research target is too narrowly prescribed”There have been attempts to provide funding for young scientists based entirely on merit, such as the ERC ‘Starting Grant'' for top young researchers, whose budget was increased by 25% to €661 million for 2011. Although they are welcome, such schemes could also backfire unless they are supported by measures to continue supporting the scientists after these early career grants expire, according to Gross. “There are moves to introduce significant funding for young investigators to encourage independence, so called anti-brain-drain grants,” he said. “These are dangerous if provided without later independent positions for these people and a national merit-based funding agency to support their future work.”Such schemes might work better if they are incorporated into longer-term funding programmes that provide some security as well as freedom to expand a project and explore promising side avenues. Butlin cited the Canadian ‘Discovery Grant'' scheme as an example worth adopting elsewhere; it supports ongoing programmes with long-term goals, giving researchers freedom to pursue new lines of investigation, provided that they fit within the overall objective of the project.To some extent the system of ‘open calls''—supported by some European funding agencies—has the same objective, although it might not provide long-term funding. The idea is to allow scientists to manoeuvre within a broad objective, rather than confining them to specific lines of research or ‘thematic calls'', which tend to be highly focused. “The majority of funding should be distributed through open calls, rather than thematic calls,” said Thomas Höfer from the Modeling Research Group at the German Cancer Research Center & BioQuant Center in Heidelberg. “Scientists are usually very energetic when they can pursue their own ideas and less so when the research target is too narrowly prescribed. In my experience as a reviewer at both the national and EU level, open calls are also better at funding high-quality research whereas too narrow thematic calls often result in less coherent proposals.”“Cutting science, and education, is the national equivalent of a farmer eating his ‘seed corn'', and will lead to developing nation status within a generation”Common threads seems to be emerging from the different themes and opinions about funding: budgets should be consistent over time and spread fairly among all disciplines, rather than focused on targeted objectives. They should also be spread across the working lifetime of a scientist rather than being shot in a scatter-gun approach at young researchers. Finally, policies should put a greater emphasis on long-term support for the best scientists and projects, chosen for their merit. Above all, funding policy should reflect the fundamental importance of science to economies, as Seibert concluded: “Cutting science, and education, is the national equivalent of a farmer eating his ‘seed corn'', and will lead to developing nation status within a generation.”     

Ethical Research Issues: Going Beyond the Declaration of Helsinki

La Vaque and Rossiter made a strong, supported argument that it is unethical to use a no treatment control group in a research study if a known, effective treatment is available. Their argument is based on the supposition that the Declaration of Helsinki is the ethical world standard for research with humans. Their argument appears to be straightforward, but is not simple to apply. The issues are very complex, include issues not discussed in their argument, and can lead to a different conclusion as pointed out in this paper. The World Medical Association developed the Declaration of Helsinki as one of their official policies. The Declaration of Helsinki, however, is not accepted as the world ethical standard, as demonstrated by its lack of adoption by many professional associations or even by the United States Federal Government. Perhaps it is not mentioned because its ethical provisions are aspirational rather than mandatory as implied by La Vaque and Rossiter. Researchers and clinicians should also be aware of other ethical issues not directly discussed in the La Vaque and Rossiter paper. The Belmont Report is the basis for the ethical protection of human research subjects for at least 17 federal agencies and does not mention the Declaration of Helsinki. The Belmont Report mentions several ethical principles that form the basis for informed consent, risk/benefit assessment, confidentiality of data, subject selection, Institutional Review Boards, and other protections needed when doing research with human subjects. At least 2 of these core principles have direct implications to the discussion related to the use of placebo controls. The ethical principle of fidelity is also important in guiding research activities with human subjects. Researchers should be familiar with the La Vaque and Rossiter argument, the Belmont Report, and the federal policies developed to implement the provisions of that report, for example, Regulation 45 CFR 46.