[Ed: After testifying to the House Appropriations Committee in 1996, Dr. Faria was tapped to serve at the CDC on the NCIPC's grant review committee during the George W. Bush administration. This two-part series (Part I here), republished with permission, describes his tenure there. Originally published by World of Neurosurgery in March, 2007] In Part I, we discussed in general terms some of the shortcomings I encountered in many of the grant proposals submitted during my stint as a gran...

“Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem” Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to James Madison Jefferson’s Latin is probably most often translated as “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery”, though, in the context of the letter, it might be more accurately “I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude”. But in truth we rarely face a choice between dangerous freedom and peaceful slavery.  It’s usually a question of sacrificing—or being forced to sacrifice—in...

One aim of medicine – and ostensibly of public health – is to reduce suffering. It is one of the most noble things to which a person can be called. It is under the standard of this lofty goal that today’s public health hoplophobes put forth their advocacy research and agitate for decent people being stripped of their fundamental rights. They couch their position in the context of health care. But their field is public policy and law, not medicine. They want the public and policy makers...

   

There have been many breathless headlines lately about "Child" deaths by firearms, precipitated by the recent publication of a study in the journal Pediatrics, “Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States”. Once again, Organized Medicine is trotting out the dog and pony show about "gun violence" being a "public health problem", and the media is getting the vapors over "child" statistics. The problem —as is nearly always the case—is that they present an incomplete and slanted picture. ...

[Ed: After testifying to the House Appropriations Committee in 1996, Dr. Faria was tapped to serve at the CDC on the NCIPC's grant review committee during the George W. Bush administration. This two-part series (Part II here), republished with permission, describes his tenure there. Originally published by World of Neurosurgery in February, 2007] INTRODUCTION During the years 2002 to 2004, I served in the Injury Research Grant Review Committee (more recently the "Initial Review Group")...

Many years ago, I worked at the Army Medical Research Laboratory. In those days, it was the lab’s practice to run two experiments simultaneously.  One was called the "Pot Boiler" and the other was called the "Nobel Prize". The Pot Boiler was any easy experiment that more or less came out as expected. Pot Boilers didn't break new ground but usually qualified as publishable.  The "Nobel Prize" (no, we never won it) was always a long shot but held the possibility of a new scientific insight....