Cancer Fundraisers

TheCroaker · January 16, 2014

This is something of late that I have been thinking about more and more,and I was curious if some people could help enlighten me

How much money has been raised for cancer, and as far as I know, not really much has changed

No cure, and no completely effective way too stop it

and having donated in the past when I could afford to I sort of worry, who am I really giving my money too

Am I really giving my money to people dedicated to curing it, or am I giving it to large companies to try and find a way to make you pop more pills, so you pay more to them just to stay alive..?

and my fear is that all this money and all these acts people make trying to stop this large issue is just going to waste

Tmh85 · January 16, 2014

Folding helps and its free if you have a computer also you can set your option to just do cancer instead of other diseases

Skylark · January 16, 2014

Being a researcher myself, I think I can comment on this...

When you donate to several charitable organizations, whether it be AIDS, Cancer, CCFC, Livestrong, those funds essentially go into a pool that is then distributed to various researchers by way of grants. How this process generally works is each investigator will write a grant and then a panel will decide what is worthy of being funded. This is completely different from what Stanford is doing with their folding@home.

The grant process favours funding projects and researchers with a proven track record and that progress the field forward. Unfortunately this system often falls short. The greatest influence on if a grant is competitive or not comes by how many publications and the impact of said publications on the proposed area of interest. What this means is a investigator that gets lots of pubs on say cancer can aquire a grant however that investigator my not care about "THE CURE"

Ultimately, there isnt a cure. This is a public misconception. Every type of cancer is infinitely different, ie pancreatic cancer between 2 identical twins isnt necessarily the same.

The true downfall of this grant system is research that can potentially find a common treatment wont reward you with tons of publications as opposed to someone that studies how cancer manifests for example. I can name 4 different things that can potentially treat leukemia, but they are either unethical to do in patients or there is no publication reward in them.

So long story short, does your $50 annually help? I dont know anymore. It means people like myself can afford to do experiments that broaden our understanding of medicine as a whole, and possibly that greatened understanding will lead to treatment options in the future, but i doubt it means a 'cure' anytime soon.

Edit: Also I should note OP, publicly raised funds do not go to the corporations you referred to, they go to academia

TheCroaker · January 16, 2014

Being a researcher myself, I think I can comment on this...

When you donate to several charitable organizations, whether it be AIDS, Cancer, CCFC, Livestrong, those funds essentially go into a pool that is then distributed to various researchers by way of grants. How this process generally works is each investigator will write a grant and then a panel will decide what is worthy of being funded. This is completely different from what Stanford is doing with their folding@home.

The grant process favours funding projects and researchers with a proven track record and that progress the field forward. Unfortunately this system often falls short. The greatest influence on if a grant is competitive or not comes by how many publications and the impact of said publications on the proposed area of interest. What this means is a investigator that gets lots of pubs on say cancer can aquire a grant however that investigator my not care about "THE CURE"

Ultimately, there isnt a cure. This is a public misconception. Every type of cancer is infinitely different, ie pancreatic cancer between 2 identical twins isnt necessarily the same.

The true downfall of this grant system is research that can potentially find a common treatment wont reward you with tons of publications as opposed to someone that studies how cancer manifests for example. I can name 4 different things that can potentially treat leukemia, but they are either unethical to do in patients or there is no publication reward in them.

So long story short, does your $50 annually help? I dont know anymore. It means people like myself can afford to do experiments that broaden our understanding of medicine as a whole, and possibly that greatened understanding will lead to treatment options in the future, but i doubt it means a 'cure' anytime soon.

Edit: Also I should note OP, publicly raised funds do not go to the corporations you referred to, they go to academia

Thank you for your insight it is good to know, and both proves part of what I thought and, but explains it better, and I am glad to know it does not go to Corporations