Medical experts now say that our ability to detect covid fast and cheap will be more important to stopping the pandemic even than vaccinations. The leader of one of the medical technology lists I receive urged us to tell the world about a huge opportunity we are missing, applying a type of technology I once funded at NSF (under my QMHP activity https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.3310.pdf) which is much faster and cheaper than all the covid tests being used now. My reply to his list:
Your post raises the issue: IF quantum dots could improve our ability to detect covid and other pathogens, WHAT SHOULD WE DO about that? As you say, we could repost to Facebook.
Before I retired from the National Science Foundation, my first response would be to learn more about the exact nature of the opportunity, to better judge the other options for action. And so even now I went to scholar.google.com advanced search:
That yields a link to the actual paper
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/
Immediately this tells us that QD for diagnostics is a serious opportunity, but also that it was not entirely ignored.
Indeed, if I were at NSF, seeing 134 citations, I might ask: "Is this one of those emerging technologies, fitting our early Emerging Technologies Initiative (ETI) (which I briefly ran from 1988 to when it was abolished in a reorganization), which could go a lot further
and yield more benefits sooner, with the help of a modest NSF/ETI style infusion of money (and competitive review and workshops)?"
The old NSF really was a remarkable jewel, but it had firm fences: diagnosis and treatment of disease belongs to NIH, not NSF,
and we had checkers making sure we did not overstep such bounds.
I would ask: "Are there opportunities which the community has not yet touched because of how crossdisciplinary they are,
requiring that we build new connections?" That may well be, because quantum dots and quantum information science and technology (QuIST) have lots to offer that medical folks may not know about yet. IF SO,that woould have argued for more NSF initiative. In some cases, we even built JOINT initiatives with NIH, which were allowed. In this case, having a compelling national interest mattered, and matters even more now than then. (SOME things might be easier now than then! I once worked with a woman named Sonya Spengler at NSF who was active in many interagency joint initiatives, was in computer science, and was aware of recent covid funding from NSF.) But as of now, I am retired, and do not know what I would find out next if I were still there.
Still, we hope covid will be over by the time such new research could start to be usable. Who knows? I just hope we do not have a giant superspreader here in the DC area just two days from now, an event which will affect all government activities.
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Reply from medical expert:
Correct, Paul. There are already such diagnostic devices on the way, probably certified too: http://www.
But they are not widely used yet. The problem is with the hazardous nature of heavy metals used predominantly for such materials, but this bottleneck could have been overcome if investments in this kind of research have been placed on time.
Not ignored, but the illness of government funding agencies both in Europe and the US is that they are underfunding risky projects and prefer that industry realizes them. (The only exception in the US - DoD funded projects; Europe does not have such a mechanism). But industry has conflict of interests. It is profit-driven and not public-wellness driven. Why then invest in expensive technologies and methods, if the old ones are somehow working, and we can make incremental research using the old vehicles? This is ill policy, sorry. We see its results right now. This happens with any challenge so far. We decide to "collectively" share responsibility and do something when it is too late. It is like intervention for cancer patients in the last stage of the disease. This pattern has been always and for any problem since the end of WWII. Obviously only defence projects can produce results on time, but medicine is not their (primary) job. That's the problem.
In both US and European research programs there is no place for supporting an individual's research idea, if it is not "embedded" within an established research institution and his/her proposal does not fall within the frame of particular calls or programs. If Einstein had to fund his research through applications today - he would probably never try this option - he would not get a penny in his original capacity as "hobby scientist". But it was possible to read such people some 100+ years ago. In short: there are too many hurdles and too much bureaucracy for original research in the West, whereas China is literally throwing money after its research institutes and emerging companies. I still would not like to work there, for sure.
I would ask: "Are there opportunities which the community has not yet touched because of how crossdisciplinary hey are,requiring that we build new connections?" That may well be, because quantum dots and quantum information science and technology (QuIST) have lots to offer that medical folks may not know about yet.
We suffer from an over-coordination and over-optimization of limited research funds, but then when the fire is burning, there is enough money from the deep reserves to "through" where? - in the same companies that were supposed to develop these innovations over the years before, but they are not really interested in doing that (s. above). The only exceptions are the companies that cannibalize the markets.
PJW: Still, we hope covid will be over by the time such new research could start to be usable.
I am telling you that covid will not be over, and if covid is over, then there will be something much more severe.
But we will forget like the zebras in the savannah witnessing that one of them was eaten and the lions are full and lazy until the next lunch.
Today we are not luckier than the zebras despite our intelligence and technology. Mother nature is not waiting for us to digest the truths she serves us.
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