Posted by pseudoname on July 28, 2006, at 13:35:36
In reply to Re: prize suggestion, posted by notfred on July 28, 2006, at 12:41:25
My point, and I repeat it clearly once again, is that the ten million dollars was suggested as a prize for the personal accounts of the researchers, not as funding for research. In your first reply you clearly assumed that the ten million dollars was to be research funding.
Nevertheless, it is true, as your link shows, that ten million dollars would fund a lot of psychiatric drug research, even if it might not get us to a patent-free treatment that would "effectively remit TRD" that I suggested as the qualification for a prize. But a research budget is an entirely separate issue from a personal prize for noncommercial researchers.
You took one sentence from my earlier post and one sentence from my later post. But I was incontestably discussing different subjects.
> I do not think a new TRD treatment will come out of existing meds/treatments. It will take a totally new med that is not just another version of what we have today.
Perhaps your opinion is highly informed. Nevertheless, I used the study of existing medicines as one *example* of worthwhile research that could be done for less than hundreds of millions. There is a great deal that is unknown about the psychiatric properties & possibilities of existing drugs, including my own, which I take off-label for depression. Matching genetic profiles to existing ADs is an another enormously promising research avenue and something pharma manufacturers have little interest in doing. And as another example, basic (e.g., animal) research on other drugs, including ones that are, like those you presumably hope for, "totally new" but that for various reasons are eschewed or stalled by commercial researchers, could also be done for far less than ten million.
I would certainly NOT want, in this at-present fantasy world of funding, to limit noncommercial drug research to ten million dollars, even if ten million could (a) buy a lot of neglected research now or (b) be a potentially enticing prize for noncommercial psych researchers.
poster:pseudoname
thread:671040
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060724/msgs/671447.html