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Scientists Stunned as Medical Non-Profit Group Abruptly Ends Research Grants (nature.com)
A major US non-profit group focused on improving child health has abruptly terminated US$3 million in research grants -- leaving nearly 40 scientists confused, angry and scrambling to secure new funding. From a report: On 24 July, 37 grant recipients received an e-mail from the March of Dimes Foundation in New York City informing them that their 3-year grants had been cut off, retroactively, starting on 30 June. Many of the researchers were only a year into their projects, and had had just enough time to hire and train staff, purchase supplies and generate preliminary results. Now, several say that they might need to lay off employees, euthanize lab animals and shelve their research projects if they cannot find other funding -- fast. The March of Dimes, which is supported largely by individual donations, made the decision to revoke the grants because of a budget shortfall, says Kelle Moley, the group's chief scientific officer. "I know this is harsh news," Moley says. "As a former grantee, this would be devastating to me as well." That is small consolation to many researchers whom Nature spoke to.
Obviously somebody has discovered a cure for polio and they're about the break the news. We don't need the March of Dimes any more!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In this somewhat old post on how MOD spends money, it spent $96 million on salaries and benefits. If they really needed to save $3 million, why could that money not have come from there?
Salary and related expenses are 37% of every dollar MOD gets as a donation...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And I ain't talking Teddy here!
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Anyone else besides me remember the cardboard donation collectors at supermarkets when you were a kid? I remember putting a dime in at least a few times.
Even then it was amazing to think that anything could be accomplished with a collection of dimes.
pfft, you are assuming anything useful would have come from this. A cursory review of such grants reveals the answer is no.
Quit imagining that randomly throwing money at a problem solves anything.
Thats pretty amazing you were able to review 37 grants in 3 minutes. Good job. I'll let the Google guys know their personal airships are a better place to spend their extra billions.
$3m seems like a pretty small sum to raise via crowdfunding for something able to impact so many things. There's kickstarter, patreon, and experiment.com that I know of offhand.
No handouts from the government. The government now realizes that we have no use for science. Nor for art.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You are saying March of Dimes decision is related to Apple? Did Apple cut donations to March of Dimes?
The abruptness suggests that March of Dimes staff is incompetent and couldn't see the shortfall coming, that some major funding source suddenly cut them off, or maybe some insider embezzled a bunch of money. In any case, this doesn't look like a typical, "Gee, we've been having some difficulties raising money" scenario.
There are definitely some bad religious ones, but the Fear of the Lord tends to sharpen the minds of the organizations especially if they're more at the regional level where there are not enough fiefdom-building opportunities.
If you're a giver who wants to help babies--the MOD's ostensible justification for existence--go find the most orthodox church in your area. You know, the one where they believe abortion is straight up murder. Ask the head pastor or the priest who they would recommend you send your money to support. I can almost guarantee you that the percentage that will go to poor moms and babies will be significantly higher than anything sent to the MOD.
March of Dimes for you, March of Millions fro the CEO and cronies.
Surely scientists don accept grants like this without a contract for the full term pf the grant? So sue for breach of contract...
They have a a two star overall rating on Charity Navigator and a one star for financials.
Their efficiency is for every dollar they raise, they spend $0.15 to raise it. And after admin expenses, $0.75 actually goes for the programs.
So I guess your point is that, had the MoD developed and sold a smartphone before Apple did, they may have had a trillion dollars to spend on research? Man, what an opportunity lost.
Let me choose how to spend your money
You can't sell or reuse lab animals in medical research. Everybody wants clean fresh ones. These folks aren't testing shampoos on rabbits, they're testing drugs and metabolites and growth curves. The animals need to be at the right age and right treatments. Cutting funding means they cannot care for them correctly, and the whole collection is useless.
Think of them less like pets, and more like condoms. Second hand lab animals are toxic waste.
I'm going to go 'way out on a limb here and bet that none of the top people at MoD have had to worry about getting laid off because of the "budget shortfall".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
$ 3mil is like peanuts money for most well established charities like March Of Dimes, in the US. I am just wondering how much they pay to their top brass as compensation. This sounds like a ploy to garner public outcry and *encourage* people to donate more to them. Otherwise it doesn't really make sense. I very much dislike charitable organizations which go such cloak and dagger ways to get attention.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Your point of view entirely makes sense from someone who does not do animal research, however, keeping animal colonies alive in the vivarium is extremely costly (mice are the cheapest, it’s a dollar/cage/day, male and females from individual breeds must be kept separate). In the lab I work in costs can reach up to 100K a year to keep our colonies going. There is no formal means for researchers to sell animals between labs because they are contractually prohibited from doing so (many animal lines are licensed IP, when you buy breeders you agree to not resell them commercially). Furthermore, it can take weeks to transfer animal between containment facilities due to the rules currently in place, and new animals must be kept in isolation for an extended period to make sure they are not contaminated/diseased. Mice will often age out and not be useful even if they could be transferred. Beyond that, labs are hesitant to use mice from other labs unless absolutely necessary (e.g. new non-commercially available genetic strain) because it is placing a lot of trust in them managing the genetic colony, and if they have not been recently bred back into the standard mouse strains there are risks of genetic drift. Euthanasia does not cost money, it's literally a grad student pumping CO2 through the cage for 2 minutes. A single tank of Co2 can handle 1,000 cages. In summary, this is not political posturing, just the reality of animal research. Your last comments about getting money first is not how grants work. You get an allocation for a year or some timeframe, and you have to spend it by the time that year is up.
Is there a website where researchers can post research projects and I can donate per project depending on what I think is important?
That's the important info to retain, here. They have families to feed which makes them as vulnerable as us to money pressure, and therefore as corruptible as we are. This means the science they uncover is very much biased and when they don't find cures, you know why.
Would it kill you that much to read the charitynavigator site a bit?
Assuming the "Research and Medical Support" is what's been cut (since they cut research grants) then $3M in cuts is nearly 12% of that sector's budget. Is it *NOT* immediately obvious that money is completely liquid across the entire organization. For example, it can't be assumed that they can simply cut $3M from administration and transfer that cash to the research department.
It's also worth considering that they're looking at a ~$12M budget shortfall overall, so the other functions are probably taking a cut as well.
=Smidge=
Sadly, this is just part of the ongoing effort to deprioritize science in America. Watch for more stories like this, if the media even cover them. The technological edge of the scientific revolution is moving overseas fast.
You want them to release mice into the environment?
The March of Dimes was a charitable foundation to find the cure for polio. The cure has been found. But you will never end a 'foundation' when there are paying positions and a powerful fundraising mechanism in force.
Shut it down. It was a success.
You could just do a little research on your own. The charitynavigator numbers are from 2016. They were already in trouble then. In 2017 (BEFORE THEY CUT GRANTS), they laid off a hundred of their people, and sold their headquarters to raise cash.
they've been skimming the top 40% off of donations for decades, what's with your puny 37 grants?
In 2014, out of every dollar they raised, $0.15 was actually passed on through grants and support to research.
85% is eaten up internally. They are bordering on a scam.
Not to mention prostate cancer, that gets even less support, and kills more people.
Breast cancer researchers have actually BLOCKED prostate cancer researchers from sharing their data, because....
> Unlike you I did look to see if that was the case before I posted and could find no sign of it.
Well, you fuckin' failed didn't you?
I'd say stick to trolling but you're not very good at that either.
=Smidge=
Oh right, the old âoeonly religious people can be moralâ argument. Makes sense.
Not quite like that. In the process, the animals might have been "tainted" by some agent or action (injected with drugs, grafted cells, exposed to something, etc.), and as such they are not fit for any other research because of the previous procedure. Since no other team would buy them, you essentially have three options: let the team members adopt a few of them if it is possible at all, apply euthanasia or let them starve to death. Because you can't just set them free to roam the woods.
If I remember correctly, Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis (yo-need-ees), a Professor of Medicine and Health Research and Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences. He reports that 99% of medical research is hog-wash, and that everything stated in any given "study" is proven wrong within 15 years. He went on to state that the quality of researchers has fallen dramatically over the last 70 years, and that "studies" must have scary outcomes to get published and future funding.