nuclear-news

Nobel Laureate and 6 More Cancer Scientists Quit Texas Institute Over Grants -Cancer industry “politically driven”

NY Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 13, 2012

AUSTIN, Tex. (AP) — At least seven more scientists have resigned in protest from Texas’ embattled $3 billion cancer-fighting program, claiming that the agency in charge of it is charting a “politically driven” path that puts commercial interests before science.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, created with the backing of Gov. Rick Perry and the cyclist Lance Armstrong, a cancer survivor, has awarded nearly $700 million in grants since 2009; only the National Institutes of Health offers a bigger pot of cancer-research money.

Scrutiny of how the state agency selects projects has intensified since May, when its chief scientific officer, Dr. Alfred G. Gilman, a Nobel laureate, resigned in protest after it approved a $20 million commercialization project without scientific review.

Phillip A. Sharp, another Nobel laureate, was among seven scientists who resigned last week, writing in his resignation letter that the agency’s decisions have carried a “suspicion of favoritism” in how the state is handing out taxpayer dollars.

Brian Dynlacht, another scientist who is leaving, warned that the agency was headed down a path of systematic abuses.

“You may find that it was not worth subverting the entire scientific enterprise — and my understanding was that the intended goal of C.P.R.I.T. was to fund the best cancer research in Texas — on account of this ostensibly new, politically driven, commercialization-based mission,” Dr. Dynlacht wrote in his letter.

Commercialization projects focus on turning research into drugs or other products that can be sold rather than financing research itself. Dr. Sharp is a professor at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Dr. Dynlacht is at the New York University School of Medicine.

In a statement, the executive director of the Texas institute, Bill Gimson, called the accusations false and misinformed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/us/more-scientists-quit-texas-cancer-research-institute.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

see this for more

https://nuclear-news.net/2012/10/11/college-of-engineering-receives-doe-funds-to-improve-nuclear-safety-usa/

https://nuclear-news.net/2012/10/07/two-thirds-of-all-scientific-publications-and-research-retracted-found-to-be-fraudulent-and-prof-c-busby-on-academic-dishonesty/

October 14, 2012 - Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized