My stepfather is a very prominent physicist who was recently invited to participate in a new program at the National Cancer Institute exploring the ways that physics might help advance cancer research. While it seemed like an innovative project he returned from the conference in Washington very disappointed with how reluctant researchers, and particularly NCI officials, seemed to be in funding any of the truly novel proposals. He came away feeling as if the NCI were more interested in looking like it was exploring new areas of research than actually funding such projects. Ironically, the conference happened the same weekend as the New York Times article was published.

It seems that nature takes care of this on it's own for women. Why would a doctor agree to help a post-menapausal woman have a baby? There is a natural reason why that happens.

My son often works in rural Africa. He tells me that happy and loving people are to be found in situations that can only be described as miserable by western standards. Migrant workers send home earnings. Hungry families work small plots. Relatives care for the ill and orphans. Cardboard is used to put a roof overhead. In the U.S., boom or bust, money can't seem to buy you love.

Both my husband and I have barely worked in the past year. After I lost my job, we both realized that we are broke and no longer have anything to fight about! (Money)

Life is way more peaceful an we appreciate each other even more.

This debate is a slippery slope. We are after all talking about a woman's body, and a woman's right to choose.

She sold her house to afford the procedures? Does this mean that she has set up a trust fund for the care and education of her boys? Or did she spend all the money on the fertility treatments, and now her boys are not only motherless, but dependant on others for their financial well-being? This is the height of selfishness, in my opinion....

Although money in the U.S. may not buy you love. It seems money can buy you progeny.

re age of childbearing: I feel like with the constantly evolving life expectancy rates as our medical industry continues to discover medical treatments for age-related illnesses (see newest studies reported by NPR for alzheimers) that maybe this is something that could be reviewed by a panel of physicians in each state under the guidance of those state medical boards (as opposed to yet another government entitiy run by beaurocrats). Would this be a better approach to a complex issue rather than a very black-and-white standard of applying a strict age limit? The board could review physical fitness, life expectancy probability, family history, etc.

I also think this country needs to seriously evaluate whether it wants to continue to look at child-rearing as a right instead of a privilege and decide whether we even want to begin talking about over-population which is connected to virtually all societal social problems we face today.

The two men interviewed regarding early release for "non-violent" offenders both agreed that we have no programs in place, either in or out of jail/prison to deal with the high recidivism rates. If that is so please ask them why keeping the offenders in jail for a longer time make anything better??

If society sets the standard for who can adopt a child, should it set the standard for who can give birth? That sounds harsh to me but cuts through the nonsense (other word not allowed) and gets down to the core issue. I am ambivalent - there are strong arguments for and against using the above standard.

To follow up on my on-air comments, nothing could change the delight I have in my child nor the fact that her very presence may have saved my life following the loss of her mother. But with a crystal ball back in 2000, I think both my wife and I might have *at the very least* had far more substantive conversations about possibilities than we had. Instead, we chose, basically, to ignore the issue of longevity, presuming that the younger of us would "always" be there. Now, though I'm not old, I face due to family history the possibility of not surviving until my daughter leaves high school or the possibility that I will survive but that her early adulthood will not be about exploring her world but about caring for her debilitated father.

The book I mentioned, in which I tell the story of our family's progress through these issues, is called LIFE'S THAT WAY, and it was recently published by Putnam. More information is available at www.lifesthatway.com

Dear Pat,
I'd like first to congratulate you on hosting this very important discussion.

I am afraid our public, and more tragically our congress does not understand how science progresses.

One poorly understood concept, is unlike clinical medicine where making mistakes is and should be kept to a minimum, innovative research has to test many hypotheses and ideas that will turn out to be wrong. In fact the more innovative an idea the riskier the project in general. Creativity is at the heart of Innovative research and creativity requires a willingness to take risks. In order to ensure adequate innovative research, congress is going to have to accept the fact that many of the projects and studies funded today might not have direct benefit to patients today.
Secondly, most people aren't aware that many of the most powerful tools in use in medicine today were discovered essentially by accident by scientists studying very very basic processes that had nothing to do with human disease per se. Restriction enzymes, apoptosis, to name a few very important discoveries realized studying bacteria phage and the worm C. elegans respectively. Currently, this outcomes model that is being applied to the NCI research on cancer is one that works for clinical practice but not necessarily for innovative research.

I thought you had excellent guests and the questions discussed were very relevant to the problems encountering research funding by NIH and others today. It was particularly revealing your guest's dissection of the Peer Review process and how human nature was probably to blame for really innovative and possibly risky projects not getting funded.
The first guests idea of having innovative/risky projects be evaluated by a separate agency sounded like a good idea.
Many private foundations who fund young scientist are slowly changing toward funding the actual person and their potential based on extensive face to face interviews and questioning to see how the person thinks, their creativity, energy etc, and allowing at least 5 years to develop original research programs.

The last point that has to be raised here is that US science has been preeminent thus far, leading many in congress to mistakenly conclude that our science education (K-12), the pipeline for producing future researchers is in good shape. The US scientific excellence thus far is in large part due to relatively generous funding that has attracted many of the best and brightest and most innovative minds from around the world, not our own home grown scientists. In other words we are going to have to invest in serious K-12 science education infrastructure and also continue and possibly increase research funding if we are to maintain this preeminence.

Sincerly,

J. Adrian Lunn MD, PhD