Philosophy Of T.C.I.N.

Philosophy of T.C.I.N. Medical Research is at the beginning of a second great revolution. For decades medicine has inched forward while technology takes giant leaps year after year, and this is only going to get faster. As time has revealed, medicine is continuously enhanced via technology. So instead of trying to invest more resources and funding into traditional research methods, The Cure is Now will catalyze innovative solutions to our current health care issues by supporting research that lies between technology and medicine. The Cure is Now is dedicated to bringing better treatments, faster, through technology. Research Methodology----------------------- The Cure Is Now has a broad and ambitious goal of discovering cures for acquired, congenital and developmental diseases. We will achieve this through focusing our efforts on research that drills down to the root level via these four research approaches: • Curiosity Driven Research • The Cure is Now will fund scientific investigators and their teams who are called to research aspects of disease pathology, biological systems, or biotechnological mechanisms. This type of research will yield enhanced understanding, deepened knowledge, unpredictable, long term, and widely-dispersed social and medical benefit. • Applied Research Research funded by The Cure Is Now will lead to direct medical applications such as enhanced treatments, targeted gene therapy, technology-based solutions and more. • Synergistic Research This unique kind of research will be aimed at linking and connecting different kinds of science and technology. For example, how can stem-cell research be connected with brain-machine interface technology or how can nanotechnology be employed in Alzheimer’s research? TCiN will be the lines in between the dots. These kinds of questions will be answered by scientists at The Cure Is Now. • Not-yet-known Research The Cure Is Now understands that the kind of research it will support undoubtedly will lead to entirely new fields and forms of research. The Cure Is Now will selectively support these as well. Research Management------------------------- Efficiency is an important part of TCIN’s philosophy. The Cure is Now is interested in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of research. As such, it is attempting to be as efficient as possible by eliminating dysfunction, politics and unproductive work. Inefficiency tends to plague research. Many people do not perform to their potential, slowing progress through insufficient productivity, failure to cooperate with colleagues and even sabotage of other’s research or producing useless results. In order to spur development of new cures, and to do so where other organizations have failed, a system of communication, monitoring and incentives must be implemented to maximize productivity and efficiency. The most obvious source of inefficiency is the case of an employee not doing the work for which they have been hired. The solution is equally obvious: replace the employee with someone else. When people are rewarded for working with compensation and continued employment, and face the consequences of demotion or termination for failure to work, they tend to work hard; if they don’t, someone else will. Often times, workplaces are dysfunctional due to “politics” or other situations in which employees, instead of cooperating towards a common goal, pursue their own interests, to the detriment of other employees and the organization as a whole. The solution here is to have an aware and well-informed management presence to monitor the dynamics of the workplace, identify inefficiencies caused by dysfunctional interactions between employees, and to incentivize the culpable parties to alter their behavior (or replace them with more cooperative employees if necessary). Some inefficiencies may not be due to the actions of any individuals, but may be due to a structural deficiency in the system in which they work. For example, two departments may be doing redundant work on the same project, two departments which need to work together may encounter institutional obstacles to doing so, or two departments which could collaborate may not do so because they are not even aware that they have a potential synergy. Again, management needs to be aware of these situations when they arise (or design the system to prevent them from arising) and modify the system to address them. But by what standard is efficiency to be measured? Although it would be great to measure it by number of diseases cured per year (for example), it would not be practical due to lengthy timescales involved and the fact that, due to the unpredictable nature of research, a treatment may turn out to be ineffective through no fault of those who developed it. In industry, efficiency is measured by profits, which are not necessarily correlated with how many lives a product has saved or how much it has improved the standard of living; in academia, efficiency is measured by publications, which leads researches to focus on quantity instead of quality; and governments give grants to research, but very few legislators come from scientific backgrounds, and their well-intentioned but uniformed decisions, combined with the actions of some who only wish to score points with their constituents, mean that funds are not always allocated in the most efficient manner. The Cure is Now proposes to solve this problem by having a leadership composed of scientists. Together, these experts can agree upon reasonable and desirable goals whose accomplishments would lead to substantial advancement of progress towards understanding and curing diseases. Instead of being given vague and informal assignments, employees would be given clear, specific contracts. If each employee fulfilled their contract, then their work would lead to the accomplishment of the goals set by the scientific leadership. By having scientists set goals and then implementing a system in which researchers work efficiently to achieve those goals, The Cure is Now aims to drive new advances in the work of curing disease. Root-Level Approach----------------------------- Forget what you think you know about diseases. For legal reasons we cannot give you medical advice, only your doctor can. But we want you to think about research and finding cures in a whole new light. Research is what ultimately drives medical discoveries, and it is that medical research which must undergo a fundamental paradigm shift. This will be caused by The Singularity. Below you will find a list of diseases that may seem as though they have nothing to do with one another. But if you look closely, they share the common thread that there are no known cures, but also, they share root-level similarities. Billions of dollars worth of research money has gone into curing these diseases, but to no avail. That is because we have been using the past 60 years worth of technology to tackle them, and trying new techniques has been far too slow. You may look at this list and wonder, how do you intend to cure this vast number of diseases at the same time when massive efforts have been made just to individually cure them? Well, there is a difference to our approach. We will converge newly emerging technologies. We are not suggesting that we can guarantee a magic pill, delivered tomorrow. We do believe, however, that over the next several years, but hopefully fewer, there will be an overlap of different types of technologies, making the currently impossible, possible. A fundamental paradigm shift away from the purely pharmaceutical, and conventional western medical practices needs to be evolved. The Cure Is Now wants to aggressively fund research and education/awareness initiatives that will shape and hasten these cures. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, cognitive sciences and several other disciplines will merge in ways never before possible. We know that what we are suggesting may not be easy to ponder. The Cure Is Now is a group of highly motivated, talented, capable, individuals who will push for the cures. The process works like this: first there is general research, which leads to drug development, then scientists move on to clinical research/trials, then possible FDA approval, thus allowing a drug to become available for patients. This process typically costs over $1 billion, not to mention several years. We believe we can streamline this process tremendously, yet without cutting corners on any person’s safety. If you would like to see this happen, please donate now. List of some diseases we may be able to cure: • Macular Degeneration • Liver Cirrhosis • Muscular Dystrophy • AIDS/H.I.V. • General immunity • Cardiovascular • Cancer • COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) • Degenerative Disc Disease • Alzheimer’s • Osteoarthritis • Rheumatoid Arthritis • Osteoporosis • Skin aging • Cell & tissue transplant • Progeria • Dyskeratosis Congenita • Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis • Cri-du-chat syndrome • Down Syndrome • Fanconi Anemia • Tuberous sclerosis • Werner Syndrome Technological-Singularity-------------------------- The Cure Is Now believes that the root level approach will be powered by a phenomenon called the singularity. After much debate and deliberation we have concluded that in order for an individual to be able to understand for themselves what the technological singularity will be, and how it will affect medicine, is to understand it for yourself through research. We feel that rather than preaching to you we prefer to lay out the facts as they are, provide you with resources for further reading and allow you to draw your own conclusions based on expert opinions in the field. This route is the most honest and obvious approach. Below we have provided you with some links to begin your journey on the understanding of the singularity, and we ask that when you read it you think about how it will apply to medical research. You will find an endless supply of information on the Internet regarding this topic. We urge you to educate yourself on this topic. This is only the beginning, and The Cure Is Now is actively pursuing the most promising endeavors. Personalized Medicine-------------------------- The Cure is Now is very interested in advancing personalized medicine approaches to health care. Personalized medicine takes advantage of the knowledge we have garnered thus far from genetics, tissue regeneration, stem cell research, cellular markers, hormones, cell signaling pathways and many others in order to apply them to treating individual patients in the most effective way possible. The Cure is Now seeks to positively disrupt the current medical system through supporting innovative, personalized medical practices, which allow individuals to receive focused care and access to the most cutting edge medical technologies available. The Cure is Now encourages true partnerships between patients and doctors and envisions a future where doctors spend much more time with their patients, and patients receive the best possible care for their lifestyle, diet, their body and physical make up. http://thecureisnow.org/index.php/our-strategy/philosophy-of-tcin

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