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medpundit |
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Friday, November 08, 2002...as someone who reviews NIH grants, and is and has been funded by NIH for nearly 20 years (disclosure - none of it is gender related - I work the neurophysiology of respiration & deglutition/swallowing in infants, and mostly work with animal models), I think that perhaps the reality of what gets funded, and what goes into clinical trials isn't quite that biased. Grant proposals are required to show why sex ratios and race ratio (and there are larger problems there, too, of which I am sure you are aware), and in fact, whether it is appropriate to be including children in the study. But with scientific justification, one can study males, or females, or rats (more often). As is true of most of the extramural NIH research, its PI driven. I've never seen that kind of PC bias govern a decision in the funding process in the six years I've been involved, unless it was due to a failure to justify the sample. While there may be bias in the political promo, the substance of the research that gets funded is pretty damn straight. It’s true that basic science research isn’t influenced by gender quotas. And it’s true that a lot of clinical research funded by the NIH manages to avoid sexism, too. But, it’s also true that there are an awful lot of studies out there devoted to finding sex differences where none exist. The recent study of stroke symptoms in women compared to men, for example, was a study of dubious merit that not only got funded and published, but got a lot of unwarranted media attention as well, largely because the journal, The Annals of Emergency Medicine, gave it a feminist spin. We spend money on such studies thanks to departments like the Office of Reasearch on Women’s Health within the NIH - an office whose sole purpose is to make sure funds have been set aside for gender-specific research. So, while it’s true that there are many aspects of the NIH that probably don’t indulge in politically correct funding, it can’t be denied that there are also some funds within it that are specifically set aside for politically correct research, such as the recent $85 million for race-based medicine. posted by Sydney on 11/08/2002 06:37:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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