Columnist brings light to issue

I would like to congratulate Brian Ackley for his well reported and insightful column in The Bee Group Newspapers, Feb. 21.

Herbert Hauptman could have easily left Buffalo after winning the Nobel Prize in 1985. He chose to stay here because of the opportunities he had to pursue his goal of developing mathematical methods.

Brian Ackley's closing remarks were right on the mark: politicians need to "insure the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus that pipelines of state and federal money - many of which have been in recent years diverted to Iraq - flow as freely as the oil we're trying to protect halfway across the globe." Sadly, it has dried up.

Local scientists who have received merit awards (an extraordinarily rare 10 years of funding for equally extraordinary research) are now having to resubmit grants to the National Institutes of Health one and two times. Research is interrupted, capable researchers lose employment and they sometimes leave science altogether.

Research means health care and improved quality of life. Too few understand this correlation. Columns which expose the details of what is happening to scientific research in this country should come fast and furious. Thank you for taking a stand.

Caroline Duax Washington Highway

Snyder