Is Crowdfunding An OK Way To Raise Money For Zika Research?
Original article from: NPR Goats and Soda posted on April 19, 2016. by Wudan Yan
With the Zika virus spreading through Latin American and into U.S. territory, lots of researchers want to pursue projects to help fight the disease.
But there’s one problem: money.
Or rather, getting money to researchers. President Obama has requested $1.9 billion from Congress to fight Zika, but this appeal is being held up by a vote in Congress. In the interim, the White House redirected $510 million from federal money left over from the response to Ebola.
The National Institutes of Health, the major grant-allocating agency in the U.S., must wait for congressional approval before it can apportion funds to researchers.
And it takes time for government allocated grants to be approved and distributed. So scientists are doing what other cash-strapped innovators have done: They’re using crowdfunding to raise the needed finances. On March 28, the Zika Virus Challenge, an online project where scientists can describe what they’d like to do and ask for seed funding, went live on Experiment — a crowdfunding platform for scientists.
That raises an important question: Is it wise for scientists to go the independent route? Or are there potential downsides to the raise-the-money-yourself route — even if it means you could get money faster?
For instance, experts in the field typically scrutinize grant requests submitted to NIH.
“One concern about a platform like Experiment is who reviews the science, especially when it comes to safety or experiment design,” says Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious disease doctor at the Boston University School of Medicine. “There are so many different fields, so do they get specialists for every single different experiment?”
But in the case of Zika, Bhadelia thinks crowdfunding could be beneficial — “As long as the proper peer review process is there, it can help fund projects that might not otherwise be funded,” she says.