Ask Your Candidates! Is Medical Progress a Priority?
Find out what your 2014 Candidates will do in Congress to support medical research
With less than a month remaining before Election Day, now is the time to get involved in the Ask Your Candidates! initiative. Through this effort, voters can ask congressional candidates to share their views on accelerating medical progress in America. Every voice makes a difference as we look to find treatments and cures for deadly and disabling diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, and other threats like Ebola.
There are two easy ways to participate:
- Send an email to your candidates using the pre-drafted message, or a message of your own, and by filling in your contact information and clicking “Send Message.”
- Create awareness about the importance of medical research by taking a selfie. Just follow these steps: 1) Personalize an AYC! sign (or create your own sign), sharing why you support medical progress; and 2) Post your signs on Facebook or Twitter, using the hashtag #AYCresearch, or send it to us at askyourcandidates@researchamerica.org. If you’d like to see examples of selfies, see the AYC! selfies Facebook album.
A Weekly Advocacy Message from Mary Woolley: Do we still value discovery?
Dear Research Advocate:
The accomplishments of the recently announced 2014 Nobel laureates in the fields of physiology or medicine, and chemistry are breath-taking. Whether identifying the mechanisms by which the mind comprehends space and place, or enhancing ability to observe how diseases develop, these scientists have, over time, enabled progress that couldn’t have been determined by fiat. Science serves us all via an iterative discovery process, which is why policymakers are skating on thin ice when they censor research that doesn’t promise results that serve a date or purpose certain. Centuries ago, European rulers launched many ventures before eventually discovering the New World — not every journey was a success, nor was everything discovered anticipated in advance. It is ever thus as we continue to explore new worlds, since even as discoveries open new vistas, plenty of surprises occur. Indeed, some new worlds are not as “new” as first thought — to wit, October includes a holiday known to some as Columbus Day and to others as Indigenous Peoples Day. Seeing things in a new light doesn’t mean we should shut down discovery because some aspects of it make us uneasy or call our values into question.
Ebola has called our values into question, to be sure. Do we need a shared sense of existential threat like Ebola to arrive on our doorstep — a “Sputnik moment,” if you will — before Americans mobilize to demand more support for U.S. science? Although there is every reason to believe that the world can contain Ebola — we have contained all previous Ebola outbreaks — there is no denying that we are not as well positioned as we should be to face down this challenge, due to years of under-investment in research and public health, including research on diseases that seem rare and/or remote. My op-ed in Roll Call this week drives home this point, calling on decision-makers to act for NIH, CDC, and, fundamentally, for forward-thinking instead of reactive policies. Continue reading →
Statement by Research!America President and CEO Mary Woolley on Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Research!America congratulates this year’s Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine, Professor John O’Keefe of the University College London, and May-Britt and Edvard Moser, both of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Their discoveries of cells that provide the basis for how the brain maps surrounding space, allowing us to navigate complex environments, may lead to a better understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, which afflicts 44 million people worldwide. O’Keefe, who as a postdoctoral fellow was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, made the first discovery of the brain’s “inner GPS” in 1971. The Mosers continued to develop his research, discovering another key component of the brain’s mapping system which shed more light on our ability to navigate. Continue reading →