Background
The DoctorInternet Program
has two purposes: 1) to provide valuable services and 2) to advance bio-medical
research.
Subscribing Patients and Facilitators
will be using The Program mostly to become better informed about and stay
current on particular medical problems of personal interest. And Physicians
will use The Program mostly for researching specific cases and staying posted
on the developments in their fields of interest. This service of providing
our subscribers with a program that enables one to obtain the most current
and the most authoritative scientific information on subjects of medicine
and health is the primary function of The Program. And certainly, having
a better informed patient and physician is one important way of contribution
to medical progress.
In addition to those practical applications,
it also makes sense for people to contribute to more basic research on the
particular disease(s) of interest, so that progress can be furthered toward
developing more effective treatments and the eventual prevention or cure
of the disease. Toward that purpose, we can enable our subscribers to make
"targeted", tax-deductible contributions to research.
There are some advantages to making
your contributions through the DoctorInternet Program. First, we place the money where
we believe that the funds will be most effective in terms of prevention
and cure. Even if you designate a particular organization, it allows us
to promulgate particular activities within that organization that pertain
to expediting medical progress. Second, by consolidating the donations of
many people, we can have greater impact and be in a better position to influence
the direction of research. Also, it can be more convenient for you to contribute
to multiple areas of interest, and you can avoid being placed on donor lists
that frequently generate repeated solicitations. Finally, we keep administrative
costs low (less than 10%) so that money is not dissipated in high executive
salaries and superfluous expenses - a serious criticism of many philanthropic
entities.
It stands as given that we all have
a personal, vested interest in real medical progress. Annual expenditures
for medicine in the U.S. come close to 1.5 trillion dollars (18% of the
GDP), and billions of dollars are spent annually on bio-medical research
projects by the federal government, private agencies, and commercial corporations.
However, even with such massive allocations, there has been relatively little
improvement, over the last 50 years, in life-expectancy and general health
status, with the incidence and mortality of the major causes of death (i.e.,
the different forms of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes) continuing
to increase. The assertion about the lack of real progress medicine will
strike may as being preposterous, but it is true; and for a brief exposition
of this point, see: http://www.fis.org/public/survivalcurves.html.
Curiously, the last 30 years of research
in the biological sciences remains largely untranslated into clinical medical
application. Targeted, intelligent, donor contributions to projects that
are likely to have real impact on health and that capitalize on the new
and emerging understandings in biology can greatly influence medical progress;
and we believe that the DoctorInternet
fund can play a significant part in making that progress happen.
Contributing to a Specific Disease. If you
select this option, then we will build a fund for the disease which you
designate and allocate the money to what we believe is the most appropriate
individual researcher, project, or organization. Our particular emphasis
will be toward supporting projects that are aimed at prevention and cure;
and where possible, the focus will be on biological regeneration as a basis
for cure rather than conventional, symptomatic relief. Return
to this contributor section.
Contributing to a Specific Organization.
There are two advantages of donating to a specific organization(s)
through us. 1) By us making the donation and aggregating the contributions
from multiple donors, this will enable a more substantial contribution and
thereby place us in a position where we may be able to influence in what
research areas the funds are allocated. 2) Making the contribution through
us will keep you off the organization's contributor list and thereby avoid
your being dunned for more donations and your identity from being sold to
other agencies. Return to
this contributor section.
Contributing to Our Research Fund. Our particular
area of interest is in life-extension and control of ageing, with emphasis
on a particular line of research that pertains to "eumitotic"
agents - i.e., agents that induce cells to replicate properly. For more details on this line of investigation,
one is referred to that site. Return
to this contributor section. |