Crowd-funding Preventive Treatment for Breast Cancer

How is anyone supposed to evaluate the scientific merits of something like this? Or do we want funding based only on buzzwords, SEO, and video production skills?

Using PARP inhibitors to prevent transmission of a BRCA mutation seems like an exceedingly risky strategy, when pre-implantation diagnosis or selective termination are effective and have pretty well-defined risks. Messing with DNA damage detection and repair machinery is probably not something you want to do in gametes.<p>Even if this worked in mice, it is difficult for me to imagine how a trial could even be done to allow it to be approved for human use.

BRCA mutation they mention : <a href="http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/BRCA" rel="nofollow">http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/BRCA</a><p>If anyone's feeling disillusioned at this point on the lack of obvious progress: I'm not entirely sure if the problem at this point is funding as much as it is the correct allocation. Research branches off to many things, naturally, and that's how we find cures or even potential cures, but how much of it is effectively being allocated to promising areas vs just shotgunning everything? That's why I hope this project does take off.

Does anyone have a feel for microryza's near-future plans?<p>Looking at the grant applications on the first page, there are [5 5 25 4.7 9 6 17.5 10] * $1000 in goals. None of these can support a grad student for a year, let alone a postdoc.<p>Are they planning to broaden out into larger-scoped projects, or is the plan to stay small and get successful with small grants?

It's sort of a sad statement about our society that the Veronica Mars kickstarter project has raised $4.1 million with time to spare, while all of the worthy projects on Microryza combined couldn't do it.<p>Someone needs to make a for-profit movie/violent video game company with the goal of using the profits to fund this stuff.