Is Government Funding a bad idea?

I support Govt. funding for medical research such as stem cell research, cancer, AIDS, Parkinsons, etc.

I am in favor of this also because feel the more funding the more jobs will be created as a result of this opportunity.

What are the cons to this?

First, politicans play politics with the money... despite the fact that AIDS kills far fewer people in America than Heart Disease, or Cancer, it is the number one area of funding, because politicans do not want to upset the AIDS lobby... similarly Breast Cancer, one of the most treatable and identifiable forms of cancer, recieves the number two amount of funding, while prostate cancer recieves almost nothing... Politicians playing politcs with money for research kills people. If you get a disease, you better hope that disease has a lobby which has good connections!

Secondly, why should the government be funding drug research at all? That's what drug companies are for... they have a profit motivation in researching drugs... this is a far better way of getting the research to the diseases which pose the greatest threat. Actually, while drug companies have a motivation to develop cures to disease... government funded research has a motivation to NOT develop cures... this is because as soon as a government research lab produces a cure to XYZ disease, the funding will be gone, and the scientists will be out of business!

Stem Cell research, is a special case. I for one do not oppose the research... however, it should be done with private money. There are a sizable portion of the population who think it is unethical to do such research, and therefore the government should not be connected to such programs... expicall when there has been absolutly no promise that it will yield anything useful, and all expiriments have ended in utter failure.... as it stands stem cell research is a bunch of theoretical science, which gets a lot of attention because good public relations people have promised that it will cure every disease! I for one don't expect much... even if it does eventually yield some results, I highly doubt it will be the miracle that cures all cancer, genetic defects, paralysis and allows people to grow back severed limbs it has been touted to be!

The best solution would be for the government to eliminate the FDA, make such "safeguards" voluntary... this would make it much cheaper for drug companies to develop new drugs, and you would see much more private money flowing into the development of cures for disease. The current trend in the drug industry is only to develop drugs for chronic conditions, ie blood pressure drugs, erectile dysfunction drugs, because these drugs are taken forever, and allow the drug companies to actually see a return on their investment into the research and development of such drugs. Drugs like vaccines, antibiotics, and others today are rarely researched in the United States, dispite the urgent need for more research... this is because the FDA has made it so expensive for companies to develop new drugs that they cannot turn a profit.

So in summation, the answer is LESS government rather that the current trend of more government.

Often times, government funding comes along with a set of rules to follow. In effect, the funding is a way for the government to control people while handing out payoffs to do what the government says. I feel government funding COULD be good for some things, but in practice it probably will just be another way for them to control things.

1) Public money turns into private patents
2) Companies who do not receive funding have a disadvantage in research
3) Companies who do research can use funding as extortion (Oh, we ALMOST have the cure, but we can't finish unless you give us 10 billion dollars)
4) Lobbyists will make sure most well-connected and biggest political contributers get the money


I prefer government funding direct to research universities, regulation reductions that cut costs (its always better to cut unnecessary costs than raise funding), and a generally inviting business climate (low taxes, low inflation).