why medical research is so important
Where do researchers find funding?
One of the biggest issues that most scientists face is finding the money that they need to do their research. This is less of an issue for medical research than for most other sciences because of the importance most people put on their health. Nevertheless there does always seem to be a shortage of money for medical research. There are basically three sources of funding available for medical research and all of them are important.
The largest source of funding for medical research comes from private industry. In most cases this is done for the purposes of developing new medications and procedures that can be sold for a profit. However in order for these developments to occur basic research needs to be done as well. Most of the money in the case of medical research comes from pharmaceutical companies who by the nature of their business have to spend large amounts on research because of the need to constantly be introducing new products in order to stay ahead of the competition.
The fact that most of the funding for medical research comes from private companies creates a few issues that have to be dealt with. The first of these is that the results of the research can sometimes be tainted. This usually happens when a research study produces results that are not the ones that the company is looking for, sometimes they are covered up. Another issue with funding research in this way is that it limits collaboration since researchers from one company will not be able to share their results with researchers from other companies, obviously slowing down progress. This is less of an issue in the case of basic science since it is usually funded by private companies but carried out at universities.
After private industry the largest source of funding for medical research is the government. The government spends billions of dollars every year on a wide variety of medical research projects. Most of this is done at the basic sciences level but that is far from always the case. Usually the funding that comes from the government will be spent on research done at universities but in some cases it may be done with private companies. There are many different agencies within the government that fund medical research which can sometimes make getting government funding tricky.
One last option for funding medical research is charitable donations. This is a much larger source of funding for medical researchers than it is for scientists in other fields. Most of this money goes towards curing major illnesses like cancer or aids for which there is a lot of money being raised by charitable organizations. Most of this money is spent on basic research but again that is not always the case, they will sometimes work on developing actual cures as well.
