Thanks, scientific research and the citizens who fund it


From a comment thread over at jabberwocking.com:
"March of Dimes, Easter Seals, etc. did a lot to help get biomedical research started in this country.
The military funded a lot too.
Howard Hughes looking for a tax dodge boosted basic research.
The initial War on Cancer built out the modern biomedical research complex.
The fight against AIDS, once the government got fully involved, built upon the cancer research and helped us understand our immune system.
That understanding of the immune system helped develop immunotherapies.
The fight against AIDS and Ebola pushed vaccine research--though funding a fraction of treatment research.
Along the way, a stoner playing with extremophiles gave us PCR. A woman studying microbes gave us CrispR. The Human Genome Project pushed sequencing techniques. Another women didn't get tenure looking at mRNA kept at it to give us a new class of vaccines."

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