Fade to a Seattle sort of grey with Breast Cancer

Its winter in Seattle and I'm working with several people who have moved here from California in the last year. The latitude effects are showing. People get depressed and moody. That always makes things interesting in the workplace, especially when everybody is under a lot of pressure.

On an unrelated topic, I will simply point out my observation of the sorry state of popular biological science in this day and age. With big pharmaceutical and government money focused on curing "popular"--and yes I use this word intentionally--illnesses/diseases the focus of research becomes corrupted by the desire to come up with "profitable" "interesting" or "socially beneficial" results, trumping the basic science foundation needed to generate real, robust biological information (I will go out on a limb and define real/useful biological data as being that which was generated and defined in the context of true systems biology, using robust methods proven in the context of basic science); see definitions at: Institute for Systems Biology, Molecular Systems Biology, Systems-Biology portal.

Why do I call some diseases popular? Think about it. Let me use breast cancer as an example.
First let me say that I will try to keep this general, and not get into nitty-gritty statistics because that is an entirely different debate which is off-topic here (today at least).

Breast Cancer is popular. I mean that in the sense that people like to promote "awareness" and raise lots of money for a "cure" or "prevention treatments". Everybody (at least in Seattle) seems to have a pink ribbon somewhere. Now, ask any doctor what the leading cause of death for women is and you will receive the same answer: Heart Disease. There is no "walk for the cure" for heart disease (actually, there probably is one but is certainly laking in visibility) and nobody wears a [insert-color-here] ribbon for fat women who have heart attacks.

So, why do you ask is there such a hyper-awareness of breast cancer (as an example) instead of something like heart disease? Its very simple: besides age (who isn't sad when a pretty 18 year old gets a boob lopped off?), treating/preventing heart disease requires, for the most part, lifestyle adjustments. This is compared with the idea of a magic pill that just fixes the problem (unfortunately, many people seem to think this is actually what will come out of all this research), a magic pill that has to be purchased... at a price with a profit margin built in. Of course if you stop long enough, you will notice that cereal companies, health/hippy food brands and the like are starting to use heart disease in their marketing as well. But this is another grey area for another day.

My question to anybody who donates money to such a cause is this: where, in the end, do you think the money is going? And: Is it the most effective use for that money? Being in the biological science field, I have a strong opinion that money spent on BASIC BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH is more productive in the long run than dedicating money for specific purposes like breast cancer or prostate cancer.

My point is this: as we begin to understand entire biological systems in their entirety, we will inherently begin to understand the best methods of cures for things like cancer--or better: prevention of. This basic research is the foundation for all other biological research, and is not always well funded. This causes a shift in focus for lots of groups trying to raise money (via grants, or whatever) from a more basic science targeted approach, to one focused on sexier (read: "popular") areas of research that would be better off if the basic science used there is more advanced than it is right now. Its a backwards way of solving scientific problems, one that might be popular in the publics eye (and certainly profitable from a business approach), but is frustratingly ineffective from the perspective of hard science.

I will just say that I hope all of you folks donating money get your magic pill, because if you do, it will be a true miracle.

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Here's the not-so-daily (but very random) google search:
Today's Query: another turning people
NPR : Another Term, Another Turning Point
eWEEK.com - Enterprise Technology News and Reviews
Drew Curtis' FARK.com