Borrego Springs? No, Catalina Island
Long ago when I was still active in research the undisputed
leader in my field (roughly, paleomagnetism applied to local and regional
tectonics) was Ted Irving, an Englishman transplanted to Vancouver Island. Ted and I shared many ideas and enthusiasms
(sharing consisted to a great extent of him talking rapidly on the telephone,
and me listening respectfully.) I
remember once asking him if he planned to attend an up-coming conference. He replied “No. There are so many conferences these days
that, if you attended them all, you would never get any work done.” I took that to heart.
.
Well, maybe we should apply that philosophy to cancer
research. On June 29th Joe
Biden convened a Moonshot Summit (read: large gab-fest) in Washington, D.C. Apparently there were 250 simultaneous (and similarly large?) regional Summits scattered across the country.
If this article
is to believed, some important stuff was addressed; you
should read it. Nevertheless, a lot of
senior scientists were not in their labs that afternoon – although, presumably,
their junior faculty were hard at work.. Or not.
There is a new FFaB
ReplyDeleteAs I feared, “Moonshot” is mired in the mud. Too many people hunched over keyboards, not enough over microscopes. These articles are from a recent NCI Bulletin. I dare you to read them all.
ReplyDeletehttps://medium.com/cancer-moonshot/report-of-the-cancer-moonshot-task-force-executive-summary-e711f1845ec?cid=eb_govdel_moonshot-subs_moonshot_brp_report_white%20house#.fpu0z2ko1
https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/moonshot-cancer-initiative/blue-ribbon-panel?cid=eb_govdel_moonshot-subs_moonshot_brp_report_white+house
https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/moonshot-cancer-initiative/blue-ribbon-panel/brp-lowy-letter?cid=eb_govdel_moonshot-subs_moonshot_brp_report_white+house
https://medium.com/@theNCI/advancing-a-national-cancer-knowledge-system-a1c016046fbe?cid=eb_govdel_moonshot-subs_moonshot_brp_report_white%20house#.wm4pkfkg5
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/10/17/fact-sheet-vice-president-biden-delivers-cancer-moonshot-report?cid=eb_govdel_moonshot-subs_moonshot_brp_report_white+house