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littleoldMDme's avatar

I’m thrilled. This administration is putting common sense back in to governance. In a sense these moves also restore basic ethics. By ignoring equipoise, the NIH has been funding a whole slate of garbage that has not resulted in the betterment of our patient’s lives. Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s treatments have made virtually no progress. This misallocation of funding was done all under the guise of radical compassion. I used to think this travesty happened because of ignorance, but what was revealed over the pandemic was a truly evil face. Much of it was purposeful.

It is easy to see why our healthcare expenditure has nearly doubled in the last 14 years while life expectancy has decreased for the first time since the industrial revolution.

We owe a lot to our heroes, Battacharya, Prasad,Kheriaty, Makary, Atlas, Kuldorff, and others in the US and Jefferson and Henegan in the UK.

I did not expect the correction to happen all at once, but perhaps it will. What a blessing if so.

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Matt Cook's avatar

The process of funding research has become more and more political, and with that politics, the winners are those with influence, not those with good ideas.

In fact, good ideas would be completely unwelcome in the current structure. It’s Thomas Kuhn, the custodians of all the old paradigms.

Profitable sacred cows that are clearly wrong but profitable continue getting funding:

1. Mutation theory of cancer.

2. Cholesterol theory of cardiovascular disease.

3. Stents, the view of vascularity as mere plumbing.

4. Blood pressure, requires everyone be on drugs.

5. High stomach acid theory of GERD.

6. Amyloid plaque theory of dementia.

There are many many more. All the above theories get tons of funding because they sell drugs. The people selling drugs (and medical devices) are running EVERYTHING in the political realm of NIH. Everything.

Meanwhile anyone with truly innovative ideas would hardly survive a moment there.

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