Models for Public Health Research Funding

Based on some feedback from my last post, I wanted to attempt to conceptualize what might be a more suitable model for public health research funding.

For starters, let’s look at the problems. The biggest problem is that the governing bodies who dole out annual research budget allocations, grant FDA approvals, choose from among the many bids on government research contracts, etc. are not given the proper autonomy from the Administration and its inextricable ties to corporate lobbyists. We need to fix that. So here’s a crazy thought: what if we randomized the process of allocating public research funding so as to severe the ties between lobbying interests and those initiatives who are given the largest research budgets.

Take the analogy of the NBA Draft Lottery. The eleven or so teams that don’t make the playoffs in a given year are considered “Lottery Teams”. They each get a certain number of ping pong balls which go into a large randomized bowl, the worst team getting the most balls, the second worst team getting a few less balls, etc. Those who are disadvantaged in talent, ultimately reflected in their regular season records, are afforded the opportunity to improve their lot by augmenting their resources. What if we applied the same logic to public health research funding?

Would this give the little guy an unfair advantage? Absolutely not, because the free market ensures that those multinational corporations with the money to pay lobbyists in Washington to get their inflated research budgets approved would be able to privately fund their research without the federal research grants they are currently monopolizing. Let them pay for their own research. They know the big payoff is just around the horizon when their drugs and technology get approved, so if the research is legitimate and truly provides a social benefit, then they will make plenty of money in the long run.

We should also increase the amount of money given to public, peer-reviewed research labs. Letting the private sector handle our health research is mixing profit with dangerous tools -- today's health lab is also today's defense industry weapons lab. The tides of war may be long forgotten in today's youth, but the advent and use of weapons of mass destruction all happened this morning, on a humanistic scale. What I'm saying is that with product roll-outs decades in the making, there is a financial interest in corporate america to be in the war-business, even if we aren't at war at a certain given moment. We shouldn't give HEALTH grants to companies that even dabble in the type of bioengineering that could be used to devistate entire populations. We have to make health research a PUBLIC affair.

-Dr. Anton Spiteri