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Joined: Jul 28, 2005 Posts: 1279 Location: Sydney, Australia
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:41 am Post subject: Economic meltdown effects on MS treatments?
I have no idea, but i think it naive not to think the current climate will not have any effect on MS treatments. I am thinking people will be more restrained with investing in medical treatments in the pipeline that MAY turn out big later.
Joined: May 04, 2006 Posts: 3405 Location: Mid-Michigan
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 8:40 am Post subject: Re: Economic meltdown effects on MS treatments?
CureOrBust wrote:
I have no idea, but i think it naive not to think the current climate will not have any effect on MS treatments. I am thinking people will be more restrained with investing in medical treatments in the pipeline that MAY turn out big later.
Hi Cure,
I don't see how any sensible person could disagree with that statement. I read an article last night in regards to "who is getting rich from this crash"..or "what happened to my money?" and it's interesting to note that the majority of the economy is speculative and never really existed. IE: no one got rich and the perceived value no longer exists.
Now that values have dropped and there is little money to be invested, and those who do have money to invest are looking for "sure things", it's hard to imagine money for MS med investments doing especially well in the near future.
Bob _________________ Wife diagnosed with MS in Feb. 2006 and is a participant in the Tovaxin IIb clinical trial.
You are right that things are getting tight. Our cancer institute was getting $10 million a year from the state govt but we got cut off cold turkey this year. The sports stadiums are still being funded though. We are scrambling to find new funding sources. I think we'll do okay, just have to put our growth plans off for a couple of years.
A silver lining though, our management is going to be more lenient as to what funding grants we try for. In the past we were only supposed to go for cancer-related grants. Now, I can go for lupus and MS grants. My ideas are relevant for autoimmune diseases, breast & ovarian cancers, and cancer-related autoimmunity that can arise during treatment. I can put in justification for the research towards all of these. I just found out this week that I did not get funded for a breast cancer grant. I had a very good rating on it but there just wasn't enough funds available to fund all the very good to excellent grants. They (Dept of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program) liked the experimental innovations in the grant but thought that drug discovery on polyamines (my main interest) had been studied enough relative to cancer. I disagree but that's life. So I will take the ideas and peddle them elsewhere. I think I can be more convincing towards autoimmune research so I will look for funding there.
Another silver lining, since most people's retirement funds are disappearing, a lot of us will have to work longer and put off retirement. Most good researchers don't want to retire anyway.
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We are scrambling to find new funding sources. I think we'll do okay, just have to put our growth plans off for a couple of years.