Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Published online 31 December 2008 | Nature 457, 16 (2009) | doi:10.1038/457016a
News in Brief
Medical charity folds after investment losses
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
This must be the very first unwelcome news from Nature in the first morning of 2009 in Asia, when America is still anxiously sending away the tumultuous 2008. One would find it hard to believe that the Madoff fraud has such a great impact on so many fields of global enterprises that even charity research fund like the Picower Foundation vanishes virtually instantly overnight. Just imagine what $1 billion could do to improve the medical care of patients in the US, let alone worldwide. Yet it has now gone to the wind simply because of the intense greed and endless deception of an unscrupulous person. Perhaps we are hoping against hope that there will not be any more revelation of such unspeakable fiasco in 2009. This flabbergasting dark NATURE of man! (Tan Boon Tee, 01.01.09)
Great comment! Although this particular case may highlight the alleged greed of one individual, the extent of the world financial fiasco underscores the overall greed that has been increasingly dominating human activities. Perhaps one HIGH PRORITY new year resolution for world leaders (not just political leaders, but corporations, religious and others) is to deliver humanitarian based educational policies in parallel with the financial packages they are implementing to rescue greedy organisation that have caused this fiasco. Clearly any business must make a profit to survive and grow, but this has to be done responsibly. When the primary aim of a business is PURELY to make money, and not to produce goods or provide a service, greed takes over - ambition is good, greed is, sooner or later, destructive. There is a lot to be said for avoiding the seven deadly sins, as purported by most world religions!
I must say it's hard to make money even doing good. For example, my company, which is a public genomics-based Disease Mgmt company (GMED.PK), believes it can eliminate 90% of kidney failure--that due to diabetes or high blood pressure. We published the key paper in 2002, which had an n=1,000 patients. For the first time, regression of phase 2 chronic renal failure was observed. Yet over 6 years later, we're still scraping by as a company because news that 90% of dialysis can be prevented has been effectively suppressed. The non-profits, like the National Kidney Foundation, are in the vanguard of the cure-suppressors. From my perspective, the healthcare system spends a lot on clinically irrelevant research and has no real commitment to eliminating diseases anymore, unlike 60 years ago. Whether the Picower Foundation spent its money on mechanism-based research in subhuman model systems, or Bernie Madoff made off with it, amounts to the same thing as far as patients are concerned. I know of no non-profit that wants to make the mistake of the March of Dimes in the 1950s, and actually eliminate its raison d'etre. Even the March of Dimes knew enough last year during its "Year of the Premie" not to evaluate our patent for a growth factor to hasten lung maturation. In 1950, the March of Dimes would have run with the project.
I keeping with the theme of medical money mis-managment suggested by Mr. Moskowitz, whether by some classical scam, or simple corporate intentions; I ask any person how long their lives could be guaranteed were they to come up with a $465.82 positve cure-all for cancer. Then stand at the corner of Times Square and make such an announcement to the world.
I keeping with the theme of medical money mis-managment suggested by Mr. Moskowitz, whether by some classical scam, or simple corporate intentions; I ask any person how long their life could be guaranteed were they to come up with a $465.82 positve cure-all for cancer. Then stand at the corner of Times Square and make such an announcement to the world.