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Published online 25 September 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1135
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Obama outlines science spending boost
Nobel laureates endorse Democratic candidate and his plans for science.
As political and financial leaders in the United States struggled on Thursday to contain the meltdown on Wall Street, presidential contender Barack Obama released an 11-page "plan for science and innovation" that outlined aggressive investments in science and technology. The proposal includes a doubling of funding over ten years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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Obama has some good stuff about science, but what about in high school where we are falling behind. Funding continues to decline for education across the country with more and more riduculous "measurements' of success. An overwhelming amount of evidence shows that students perform better in classes that have a smaller number of sutdents (around 20 or less), yet most high school classes have more than 30 and many over 35. Its easy to see how expensive it would be to reduce class sizes so we keep going with blinders on as the US falls further and further behind. But we are going to alleviate that by giving more money to foreigners who conduct research in the US??? Not to say that funding research is bad, its not, but there needs to be some changes at the foundation and that starts in our oublic schools.
In response to DCM5150: While the president of the USA does have some say in public school education, the majority of the power (and funding) lies with state governments (http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html). I don't know if anyone is up to changing the Constitution in favor of federalized education.
I cannot consider realizable Obama's "dreams",i.e., outlining science spending boost, in the sense that he is surely right in saying that, and worthy of admiration, but - as italian scientist - I forsee that some lobbies will prevent him, even USA President, from realizing it in case of succesful researches. For instance, let's imagine that an U.S.A. scientist, even without spending money, discover the demarcation line, clinical in nature, which separates world individuals since birth into two groups: on the one hand, subjects who will never suffer from cancer, solid and liquid, and, on the other hand, individuals with such as predisposition to cancer, i.e., Oncological Terrain "and" Oncological Terrain-dependent INHERITED Real Risk in one or more biological system, bedside recognized with a no-expensive stethoscope. Well! Could a "poor" President of U.S.A. find and spend money, aiming to spreading these "dangerous" (from economic view-point) advances of Medicine? For further information about Oncological Terrain and its Inherited Real Risk, See www.nature.com, URLs http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful/2008/05/our_new_columns_narrowing_the.html#comments ; http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/08/bush_going_green_in_the_deep_b.html#comments ;http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/03/this_is_your_brain_on_diesel.html#c92279; http://network.nature.com/forums/italy/1196?page=1#reply-3344; http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/02/confusion_after_diabetes_study.html#comments). Long life to Obama.
There is reason to believe that the U.S. has much room for improvement in research funding to keep up with Europe, either in absolute terms or as a function of wealth.[1] The Clinton NIH doubling was followed with a 280% increase in U.S. pharmaceutical exports between 1995 and 2005; unfortunately, imports grew 582% in the same time, leaving us with a $14 billion pharmaceutical trade deficit in 2005.[2] While interpreting these facts surely can't be as easy as it looks, I would think that the U.S. can reasonably afford Obama's proposal to redouble NIH funding and that this could significantly reduce the U.S. trade deficit. Thus, there may be very little real financial sacrifice required to do more research, whereas the costs of failing to understand disease, environment and other issues are all too clear. 1. See especially Fig. 1-2 of David King, 2004, "The Scientific Impact of Nations", http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n6997/fig_tab/430311a_ft.html 2. Patricia Van Arnum, 2007, "Changing Fortunes in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing", http://pharmtech.findpharma.com/pharmtech/Article/Changing-Fortunes-in-Pharmaceutical-Manufacturing/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/400546