The Underscore Archives

On 03/12/06, Oliver Humpage <oliver at watershed.co.uk> wrote:
> And in response to Aaron, I don't *think* it's Oxford university's job to
> fund third world aid packages. Their job is meaningful research. I shall be
> emailing them in support.

But Matt said that saving human lives is more important, so I
suggested putting money where his mouth was.

Also Oxford and Cambridge receive pretty large public subsidies (much
much larger than any other university in the UK) from the public
purse, so that money *could* be spent on saving lives (of course it
wouldn't be, as Trident and the war on freedom, as well as the civil
war we created in iraq will suck every spare penny, and then some from
the public purse).

I also you think you'd be incredibly naive to think this lab would be
used to research genuinely live saving medicine, most drug and
medicine research in the west is funded by big pharma (and they'll be
the ones paying for the research at this lab, no doubt), who are
interested in drugs they can sell to keep the deep pocketed market of
aging europeans and americans people alive for a bit longer, and with
the ability to still have sex, reproduce or drive their own cars when
they would have died decades ago elsewhere in the world.

So this fantastic new lab would be used for researching (if the past
decade is anything to go by) the next viagra, drugs to reduce the
effects of alzheimer/parkinsons, etc. Not actually saving lives, just
making them a bit less awful for those who can afford to pay for their
own medication.

Shame so little research is done on preventing and detecting cancer,
etc earlier - much of that doesn't involve as much animal or other
expensive, laborious, hit and miss blue sky stuff, but boring
investigation of patients themselves.

Of course I could be a bit bitter because I lost somebody to cancer
this day a few years ago, and instead of all the new chemo treatments,
a litle more money spent on cell counts, scans and hospices would make
far more difference.

A.

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