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1165 points jbredeche | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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chewbacha ◴[] No.43998395[source]
Good thing RFK pushed out the official overseeing this financing and the current administration is actively defunding the organizations that produced this.

Better to have more disabled or dead babies instead of science.

/s

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pacoWebConsult ◴[] No.43998457[source]
From a purely utilitarian perspective, funding research like this is not an effective use of dollars at the margin. How many people could we save if an equivalent amount was put into reducing obesity, smoking, and drinking? How many people could we save if we stopped spending money we don't have to do things that the government isn't competent at allocating anyways?

That's not to say the research itself is not impressive nor important, but think critically about the fact that this money doesn't exist in a vacuum.

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1. psychoslave ◴[] No.43998777[source]
That is not comparable at all. To save people from obesity, smoking and drinking, you don't need more resources on fundamental research. You need different education, and socio-economical programs, possibly even less funds on the overall: if no resources is spent anymore in promoting bad habits, you end up with more financial resources and a healthier population.

Instead if no resources is allocated on developing all the technical requirements to do such a thing, humanity ends up with less tools to heal itself, and that's it.