Posts Tagged ‘Lou Weisbach’

On Cancer Research, Incentives and Cures

September 18th, 2011

From a blog entitled TTAG, The Truth About Genetics, comes a scathing indictment of the American Cancer Society. Truthfully, some of the contents are infuriating, but especially so, because as a co-founder of a research institute, I’ve lived them. First hand. When I saw that  the American Cancer Society’s two CEOs make a combined $1.6 million dollars in salary, I wasn’t shocked. Heck, the president of a 120 bed hospital who retired recently made almost that much. ACS is a big organization with lots of moving parts. It takes talented people to run big organizations, and they typically don’t work just for food.

From the TTAG  blog:

Today, ACS’s revenue is $1 billion, and the amount that goes to research is a measly 16%. Research is not the primary goal of ACS, and one of the great things they do is help patients undergoing chemotherapy by buying them plane tickets and paying for their costs. But, even when you consider other program costs like cancer treatment for patients, ACS has the lowest score for charities in terms of efficiency: 1-2 stars out of 4. (24.78%, according to CharityNavigator.org)

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Once again, no surprise. The main issue that I had with the ACS was that their research funding, as meager as it is, goes to the “Good Ole Boys,” the group that is already part of the NIH/NCI club. Okay, you say, they have to have some standards. The Komen people don’t follow that same “Good Ole Boy” path, and thank goodness. They look for good science wherever they can find it.

So, what’s the real reason that I get upset? I sometimes think I’ve written too many posts about this already, but let me say it one more time: Unless and until we realign the system that currently is used to fund basic science in this country, we will never find true cures for cancer. There is very little to no incentive to cooperate, to work together, to encourage scientists to share and to reward them with grants for cooperating.  In fact, the entire system actively discourages it. It is a “Diva”-based system, that encourages silos of power around individuals.

Bottom line? We have a healthcare system that does not support wellness and prevention, but  instead financially rewards sickness and continuous testing and care for what may have been preventable ailments, and we have a research system that discourages cooperation and collaboration. We have a pharmaceutical industry that is interested in financial blockbusters…just like the movie industry.  We have a political system that caused our country’s credit rating to be downgraded and the price of money to escalate, and finally, we have an infastructure that is crumbling.

The good news, however, is that we still are the United States of America, and if we work together T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R  this can all be fixed.  It’s time for those of us who understand this to be heard.

Health 2.0 Leadership (1 of 2) from Nick Jacobs, FACHE on Vimeo.

Sandpaper sheets, green jello and patients who leave with infections they didn’t have when they were admitted. Hospitals DON’T have to be this way. Nick Jacobs FACHE reveals how, as CEO, he transformed a rural, critical care hospital from near bankruptcy to a consistently profitable, internationally-recognized model of patient-centered care and innovation. By creating a hospital environment that embodies healing in every aspect of its operations, Nick’s hospital also achieved one of the lowest acquired (nosocomial) infection rates in the U.S. for five years running.

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Posted in Healthcare, Partnerships, Public Health

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The Valley of Death

November 20th, 2008

Sharon Begley wrote for Newsweek Magazine an article entitled Where Are the Cures? Scientists call the gulf between a biomedical discovery and new treatment the “valley of death.” This has been a topic about which I have written several times. As a relative newcomer to the world of scientific research, my journey has been somewhat perplexing and always disconcerting. Every day articles, web stories, and scientific papers cross my desk touting the amazing discoveries that are being made at the basic research level. When I query my insiders, however, they point out that these discoveries very rarely ever get to the public for their care and treatment.

Some of the reasons behind this gap in medical science lead back to a broken system with inappropriate incentives locked firmly into place. How do we get the basic discoveries to be translated and moved into actual treatments?

Why are so few of the discoveries making their way to both treatments and cures? It is because our system of NIH-sponsored science is set up to discover things; plain and simple. Once the discovery is made, articles can be written, which is the sought after reward in academia since these publications lead to more grants from the NIH, and so the circle goes round and round.


Image Credit: Corbis

The obstacles to translational research in which the studies actually move from the scientist’s bench to the patient’s bedside are so intense that they are referred to in some areas of the scientific community as the “valley of death.” According to Begley’s article, “The valley of death is why many promising discoveries-genes linked to cancer and Parkinson’s disease; biochemical pathways that ravage neurons in Lou Gehrig’s disease-never move forward.”

The author challenges the incoming Obama administration and Congress to take a look at this daunting dilemma and to begin to revamp our biomedical research system by creating what Richard Boxer, a urologist at the University of Miami, and Lou Weisbach, a Chicago entrepreneur, call a “Center for Cures” at the NIH. Interestingly enough, the model that they endorse is exactly what was created here in Windber where multidisciplinary teams of biologists, proteomic and genomic scientists, technicians, and biomedical informatics specialists work together with Walter Reed Army Medical Center to move a discovery to an actual cure.

Of course, with the cuts made to the NIH funds, creating anything new that is unfunded could take away from basic research, and limit hopes for these cure discoveries. The article explains that while the NIH budget was doubling, new drug approvals fell from 53 in 1996 to 18 in 2006. What’s wrong with this picture? Twice the money, less than half the discoveries.

The sad case, however, is that even those organizations that try to establish these new world order cure centers are not funded by the NIH because of this fundamental design to enhance only basic research. The article ends with this: “I’d be willing to put up with potholes in exchange for a new administration spending serious money to take the discoveries taxpayers have paid for and turn them into cures.”

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Posted in Healthcare, Medicine

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