Honestly, off the top of my head I know the NIH has said it tries to account for private spending (or it is a stated mission - whether or not its followed idk) when making funding decision at both the broad levels and the study application levels. This is an important mission because obviously some diseases will randomly be more popular, like, say randomly having a Michael J. Fox get sick or be more attractive to private spending for superficial reasons. If the NIH seeks to treat national health issues, than it must offset the popular diseases spending that may not reflect actual national suffering. So like breast cancer vs some random, worse cancer.
I don't know whether she is not aware of the logic or is unaware of the NIH stated mission but I find that comment particularly irksome. Actually, less private spending = more public spending for a given disease, if all else is equal (demographics, suffering, grant requests, etc.)
Anyway, the consortium seems like a bad idea if its going to be really, really poorly funded and I have no reason to think otherwise. Again, blaming heterogeneity for intentional, internal bias within the NIH.
CFS study sizes are small because funding is small, I don't understand that comment either.
As far as I can tell the working group has, and will continue to be, a functionally useless body that is there so they can say they have a working group.
