Sunday, January 20, 2013

CPRIT BACK IN THE NEWS!

IN AN INTERVIEW JUST FEW DAYS AGO WITH THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE,
Governor Perry was wrongfully condemned and attacked by the newspaper when he stated: "CPRIT' job is not just to fight cancer, but to create economic avenues from which wealth can be created".  At CRBCM we believe that any investment does that.  And investment in health does create wealth no matter how you want to sugar coated it.  They are Cities across the country which would be empty without health enterprise money. Fighting cancer is a noble thing but fighting cancer and changing lives by creating opportunities is even better.  You can't advance this noble cause without putting brains to work.  When you pay brains to work you create opportunities and wealth whether you like it or not.   The wrong way to invest however is to become biased, distributing the wealth to Universities exclusively and their cronies at each CPRIT fund allocation sessions.  And all this based on assumptions that Universities are the only media of scientific research.  We argue that CPRIT can create scientific research in new locations as long as qualified people can be hired to do the work.  Universities have funds from their vast pool of donors.  They should be the number one beneficiaries we agree, but not the only one.  Also the distribution of wealth should not exclude some cities, Biotech companies benefiting from grant should not locate only to Houston, Dallas or Austin.  That's the argument El Paso, the fourth city (population wise) in this State, is making!  So yes CPRIT should improve its policy.  New requirements need to be put in place to allow a fairness in this system!   And a bigger pool of beneficiaries is called for to expand the pool of ingenuity in the race for cancer  cure


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 Referenced Article

Mission creep

CPRIT is supposed to help find treatments for cancer, not 'create wealth.'

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