Letter from Department of Health

[J_T]

My MP, Tim Farron, wrote to the DoH on my behalf regarding funding of pancreatic cancer research. I have just received a reply from him enclosing this letter.

Are they actually saying the scientific quality of the proposals from PC Research have been rubbish for the last 40 years? Should research funding be based on competition or need?! Pft!

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/3967/imgivm.jpg

[MSH]

I think it's reasonable to direct funding to areas likely to achieve greater impact, more bang for your buck as our American friends might say. Such decisions should take into account numbers involved and level of previous funding. Cancer is to an extent a confusing word as increasingly it can be curable, especially in children, or in many cases be more in the nature of a chronic disease.

Sadly there are cancers were the prognosis has changed little for all our scientific endeavour and pancreatic cancer falls in this category. That said I believe that Folfirinox is a significant step forward and should start to improve survival figures in the near future.

[J_T]

For scientific endeavour you need funding. Its great that lots of diseases have made progress over the years but I think its reasonable to spread the research funding to areas where little or no progress has been made, otherwise being diagnosed with a certain condition just becomes a death sentence and that's not on.

As you say, the Folfirinox regimen looks promising, just think what might have been achieved, and how much further forward we might have been had more funding been available.