Thought on the public funding of science
September 5, 2014
Simple truth of the recentEbola hysteria and the ensuing media coverage of scientists working on hemorrhagic viruses. Approximately 85% of bioscience now wishing ill on a whole lot of people so as to draw attention to their scientific domain.
DrugMonkey 
September 5, 2014 at 7:53 am
“Our research will help us to understand how neural circuits transmit pain signals caused by antibiotic-resistant bacterial sepsis.”
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September 5, 2014 at 8:56 am
Kevin, if you think antibiotic-resistant bacterial sepsis is up there with Ebola for ways-to-get-the-actual-public-motivated, I have REALLY bad news for you…
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September 5, 2014 at 1:25 pm
But how would we get additional BUNNY HOPPING funding with this strategy?
Killer bunnies?
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September 5, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Indeed. Bunnicula. Were-Rabbits. That sort of thing.
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September 5, 2014 at 7:01 pm
becca, talk to me again in 20 years when vancomycin doesn’t work anymore.
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September 6, 2014 at 11:40 am
It’s no ordinary rabbit. It’s got sharp pointy teeth!
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September 6, 2014 at 4:19 pm
@kevin
It’s not that antibiotic resistance isn’t *important* — I’d agree that it has the potential to kill orders of magnitude more people than Ebola, MERS, and so on. But viral epidemics are just so dramatic and capture the public’s interest. How many movies have been made about epidemics of killer viruses? Has there even been one about antibiotic resistance?
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September 8, 2014 at 9:58 am
Similar to the ALS challenge, wishing people were pouring buckets of water over their heads and giving to my research area.
The recent interest in Ebola would not be enough incentive to work on it. The regulations, paperwork, and site visits involved in BSL-3 work would be bad enough. If you worked on a BSL-4 agent, the regulatory burden would be crushing.
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