Retroid Raving

...is the headline for an article from from Michelle Faul of The Associated Press yesterday, after the publicity junket organised for the local launch of the UCT-developed HIV vaccines presently in Phase I clinical trial here and in the USA.

The AP piece goes on:

After a government official lauded the project at a ceremony at Cape Town's Crossroads shantytown, the scientist leading the research said state funding had been halted.

The contrast between Monday's hopeful vaccine launch and the revelation of funding cuts raised questions about whether the government was backsliding on its pledge to combat AIDS.

Anna-Lise Williamson, an AIDS researcher at the University of Cape Town, told The Associated Press the clinical trial would continue with U.S. money. But she said South Africa's Department of Science and Technology had pulled its funding in March, while the project's other sponsor, the state electricity utility Eskom, did not renew its contract when it expired last year.

Neither government spokesmen nor Eskom immediately returned calls seeking comment about funding cuts.

....

Williamson, the vaccine project's head researcher, said it was crucial to continue testing.

"For vaccine development presently, the South African AIDS Vaccine initiative has no money. If we do not continue working on this, we will never have a vaccine," she said. "It's incredibly important that we keep working."

Which contrasts rather with the UCT piece this morning, which doesn't mention the last bit.

Nice to have some of this out in the open, though - especially as it directly affected me, in that my HIV vaccine development projects halted abruptly, and caused the retrenchment of three people with about 27 years worth of accumulated expertise in HIV vaccine development.

Because of what amounted to a spat between a statutory funding body - the MRC - and a government Department - Science & Technology - over governance of the SA AIDS Vaccine Initiative, administered by the MRC.  Basically, DST wanted SAAVI management to change; when it did not, they pulled their funding.  And the largest biomedical biotechnology initiative in Africa abruptly folded.

Oh, it gets worse: there were comments that our vaccines were the products of bad science and would never get into people, for example.  Amazing how petty people can be, when there is a lot at stake.

Someday the whole story will be told.  Soon....

Ed Rybicki

Who could forget, who could forget....

Sitting in a classroom in St George's College in Harare; listening through a storm of static on a little radio to the halting voice of Neil Armstrong doing his small step and giant leap - and then trekking to a cinema in Harare a week or two later, to see the actual footage of the moon landing - in black and white, so fuzzy it was hardly visible, but we wouldn't have missed it for the world.  For a 14-yr-old science fiction aficionado, this was Christmas, the Millenium and the Holy Grail, all wrapped into one.

So it was entirely fitting that, on my way to the airport at 5 am yesterday, I commemorated the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's successful mission with Jethro Tull's "For Michael Collins, Jeffery and me" (Benefit album, 1970) - loudly.  Commiserating with Michael Collins.

"I'm with you, LEM
Though it's a shame that it had to be you
The mother ship is just a blip
From your trip made for two
I'm with you boys, so please employ just a little extra care
It's on my mind, I'm left behind
When I should have been there
Walking with you..."

We marvel now that it was done with slide rules, with less computing power than is now packed in the average cell phone, that 1950s technology was driving a 1960s achievement.  That it was probably done for all the wrong reasons - we didn't care then, and we shouldn't care now.

We took a step off the planet.

And then we stepped back.

Ah, well.

"And the yellow soft mountains
Grow very still
Witness as intrusion
The humanoid thrill"

As a long-time aficionado of the Weekly Mail Mail & Guardian, it was hard not to miss - in the Higher Learning supplement in today's issue - an article entitled "Research put on hold to fund World Cup", with reference to the National Research Foundation's lack of funding for an SA-Spain joint programme.

Now, this was the first time I have seen this in print - although I have heard it said a number of times with regard to why it is that the NRF has dismally failed recently in what one would assume to be their prime function: actually giving out money for research.

Devotees of this blog - yes, T_Ed, you and The Cow - will know that I have oft referred to our premier "pure" research funding agency - the NRF - as being an acronym for "Not Real Funding".

And now you know why.

Seriously, now: what with the fiasco around the "Blue Skies"  funding area, recently featured in the SAJSci (and here), where the NRF blithely redefined the mission statement for the Focus Area to mean ONLY original research proposals would be funded, one HAS to conclude that the agency is ineffectual, underfunded, and directionless.  From the M&G supplement:

Dr Therina Theron, senior director of research and innovation at Stellenbosch University [and formerly well known to UCT folk], captured a wider mood when she said that "although the academic community strongly supported the development associated with the World Cup, serious long-term damage" is envisaged if the already insufficient national investment in research is reduced even further as a result of any event.

"Scientific research and the building of highly skilled human capacity require a long-term and consistent approach. Any diversion of funding away from research, regardless of where the funds are diverted to, will result in a loss of highly skilled academic staff, a lack of ability to train adequate numbers of postgraduate students nationally and the reduced ability to effectively perform innovative research … It will take the South African research community many years to recover -- long after the euphoria of the World Cup event has passed," she said.

Although the South Africa-Spain joint science and technology research agreement is one of 30 similar projects managed by the NRF, the research community said the cancellation of this initiative was indicative of wide-ranging problems at the agency, which has the task of supporting and funding research organisations and their work.

These problems include a decline in real terms in the core funding received from the department of science and technology and a new funding strategy, which has diverted funding from general research to national priority areas. The funding crisis was highlighted in a recent article in the South African Journal of Science.

On an operational level the research community has raised concerns over the service levels of the NRF. These include a lack of well-trained staff at the NRF, inadequate processes in terms of peer reviewing of applications for funding, inadequate communication and ineffective management in the process.

The absence of a chief executive for seven months [he stayed in a hotel, then went back to his family in the USA] has also had a negative effect on the agency, meaning there are high expectations from the newly appointed head and previous vice-president, Dr Albert van Jaarsveld, to tackle the crisis.

Ja, boet...so add "leaderless" to the catalogue of woes.

There are real consequences to this buffoonery: one of the most important is that programmes which train students are being terminated, with all of the knock-on effects that this implies.

Like alienation from research for students who get cut loose.  Like the gatvol factor kicking in with unfunded researchers.

Let's hope there is a long and lasting economic benefit to SA from the 2010 World Cup - because there may well be a long and lasting research deficit to offset.

I'm a big fan of Scrabble, especially when there's no TV or only hand-held internet access - and I enjoy collecting those inadvertent sentences that crop up in a good densely-populated board.

You know: things like "seamen wee badly", or "nuns howl insane"?

But I have a recent example here that can only be a Message.  From Someone on a Higher Plane....

But WHICH Dean??!!  We should be told....

...is what my son had started saying to me recently - a bit too often, it seemed.  I wondered why - and then the daughter and the wife forced us into a holiday last week, and the familial blue bus took off into parts unknown....

To us, that is: I am sure the Karoo National Park, the N12 south from Beaufort West, the R328 and Swellendam are familar to many, but not to the family Rybicki-Williamson, and definitely not in winter.

Not that it was like winter, mind you: shorts and T-shirt weather most of the time - at least, until we had to drive into Cape Town yesterday, into the howling teeth of a gale-force north-wester, and lashing rain.

But I had chilled - big time; no work more complicated than quick emails (OK, I confess I took my phone), and nothing more intellectually taxing than Scrabble; the only things to worry about being whether or not we would see a rhino or a buffalo to round out our viewing.

It was quite ridiculous what constituted necessities for a week away, though: a Nintendo DS Lite, four cell phones, Nikon D-60 and CoolPix, Sony digital video camera, laptop for photo downloads - and chargers for all of them, with a breadmaker.

Ah, well.  Maybe next time we'll go tenting, with just gas.  And maybe an inverter for the breadmaker.  And solar chargers for the phones....