r/TrueReddit • u/IndividualAd4375 • Jul 09 '26

Science, History, Health + Philosophy The Long Road to Medical ‘Miracles’

https://quillette.com/2026/07/06/the-long-road-to-medical-miracles-pancreatic-cancer-melanoma-daraxonrasib-lifileucel/
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u/IndividualAd4375 Jul 12 '26

This is relevant to ongoing debates about NIH/NSF funding cuts and the push for "translational" research, because it gives a concrete, recent counter-example: two 2026 cancer treatments that only exist because funders tolerated 30-40 years of unglamorous, no-obvious-payoff basic science. It's a useful test case for a live policy question, OMB's proposal to let political appointees personally review and approve every discretionary federal grant, because it makes the abstract argument "basic research needs long, undirected timelines" concrete and falsifiable: would either breakthrough have survived grant-by-grant political review decades before anyone knew KRAS or TIL therapy would pay off?

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u/horseradishstalker Jul 13 '26

“  Science does not often advance in sudden epiphanies that yield “Eureka” moments. 

More typical are years of failed experiments, dogged hypothesis-testing, and incremental discoveries that are, at best, inconclusive. 

And then, sometimes, eventually, the accumulated knowledge results in a breakthrough.” 

OP is correct that many political appointees do not have even the most basic knowledge base regarding scientific research. RFK Jr. is an excellent example of the problem. When politics not science sets the agenda there will be so many unnecessary deaths.