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The Shame of Biomedical Research in the U.S.

Ember

Senior Member
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By Llewellyn King
c.2014 Hearst Newspapers
Modified: January 16, 2014 at 1:58 pm • Published: January 16, 2014
(For use by New York Times News Service clients.)
When the dark shadow of incurable disease settles across a life, it is brightened only by the hope that science is on the job: The cavalry will come.

Horribly the cavalry — researchers in the big pharmaceutical companies and the government-run National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control — may not even have mounted.

New drug development is a murky business governed by huge risks, inertia, bureaucracy and politics.

I've been looking at the role of biomedical research and the development of new therapies and drugs through the lens of one disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

But it is symptomatic of the whole struggle for cures, which means funds. It is a peephole into a system in chaos; where good intentions, economic reality, public pressure, politics and bureaucratic apathy play a role in where the research dollars go....
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