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Grants have been intended to fur­ther research in all realms, most notably the can­cer world, although the past 40 years have demon­strated an obvi­ous decrease in grant fund­ing, lead­ing to fewer research break­throughs in the indus­try. Top fed­eral can­cer offi­cials have noted that the grant sys­tem needs to be changed because of the cau­tious steps, which the many can­cer insti­tutes take when fund­ing research, but steps have yet to be imple­mented to curb this fact.

Many top sci­en­tists and researchers have come up with novel ideas that can either lead to devel­op­ing more drugs to com­bat can­cer, or lead to a fur­ther under­stand­ing of the causes of can­cer. How­ever, many grant pro­grams refuse to fund such endeav­ors because they don’t con­tribute whole­heart­edly towards win­ning the fight against can­cer. Many of these indus­tries are still hop­ing to dis­cover an over­ar­ch­ing cure for can­cer, and devote more time and money to this sin­gle endeavor. Addi­tion­ally, even some of the stud­ies that can prove to be help­ful in the can­cer world are denied because of the lack of fur­ther research; these sci­en­tists can­not receive the proper research with­out grants and many are there­fore caught in this catch-22 of sorts.

Can­cer research was sup­posed to have been much more devel­oped than it is when this type of fund­ing orig­i­nally began 40 years ago, though it was hard to pre­dict the mas­sive impact can­cer has had through mod­ern soci­ety. With the many dif­fer­ent forms and many dif­fer­ent muta­tions, it has become increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to develop an over­ar­ch­ing “cure” for can­cer. Many of the break­throughs in the indus­try have come about as a result of out­side mon­e­tary fund­ing and donors who con­tribute large amounts to spe­cific causes. Most of the fund­ing for major grant sites addi­tion­ally come from walkathons and memo­r­ial dona­tions rather than a larger indus­try. The grant review com­mit­tees are also becom­ing increas­ingly cau­tious with their money because of the small amount of funds they have to sub­mit for research; if they do not see notice­able promise in spe­cific research ven­tures, they will reject the plan. This has hin­dered many fur­ther steps in can­cer research because of the smaller projects that can help towards gain­ing a bet­ter insight into the sus­cep­ti­bil­ity of can­cer.

While there are many ven­tures through­out the nation that require more funds than the can­cer indus­try does at a faster pace, there should at least be addi­tional fund­ing that sup­ports these endeav­ors. For a dis­ease, which has afflicted thou­sands of Amer­i­cans over the past decades, we have yet to make the can­cer indus­try a top pri­or­ity in any gov­ern­ment fund­ing. This may not change any time soon, but rec­og­niz­ing the fact that research is not mov­ing at a fast pace due to this lack of funds for grants is impor­tant towards gain­ing a bet­ter sys­tem to sup­port this research.

This post was con­tributed by Megan Jones, who writes about the nurs­ing col­leges. She wel­comes your feed­back at Meg.Jones0310@gmail.com

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