Do Canadians Benefit From Government-Funded Clinical Research?

I mean all Canadians, not just the researchers themselves and their universities

I want to be clear that this post is about measuring the value of funding for clinical research and not about funding for disease treatment and public education - both of which clearly fall at least partially within the scope of government responsibilities.

Government data shows us that in 2023, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research distributed $74 million in “allotments” and $1.36 billion in grants. That same year, the federal Department of Health contributed $31.6 million to the Canada Brain Research Fund Program.

A great deal of that money was earmarked for research into causes, treatments, and cures for many terrifying diseases. Researchers often access funding in the form of grants awarded through key organizations like the Alzheimer Society of Canada and the Brain Canada Foundation. Most of those grants are directed at research faculties in Canadian universities.

The way charities are structured in Canada means that government funds will often pass through multiple organizations before charitable projects actually happen. The Brain Canada Foundation, for instance, received $9.4 million in government funds during the 2022-23 filing year. But they also gave $11.9 million to “qualified donees.” That amount would likely help explain the $12.9 that the Alzheimer Society of Canada reported receiving from other registered charities. And it also illustrates how the “supply chain” of Canadian research funding works.

This funding has been going on for a very long time. The Alzheimer Society, for example, has been involved in government-funded research since at least as far back as 1988.

I’m curious to know what’s come out of all that spending in the context of, say, dementia-related research. Specifically:

1. What concrete developments were achieved in understanding causes and implementing treatments and cures?

2. Have academic research programs translated into commercial economic development (which is something about which, in the broader context of technology research, Kyle Briggs has been writing a lot lately)?

The most obvious way to measure progress against a disease is to observe death rates. Statistics Canada data shows us that the crude mortality rate (per 100,000) for Alzheimer’s disease in Canada has dropped from a high of 19.7 in 2008 to just 13.9 in 2022. But over those same years, Parkinson’s deaths rose from 5.6 to 9.3.

Those two trends are probably unconnected. I suspect (and hope) that the drop in Alzheimer’s deaths could be largely due to successes in public education related to preventive lifestyle choices. But even if research hasn’t yet led to cures, there’s little doubt that there’s been progress in managing dementia and improving and extending lives post-diagnosis. Let’s assume that research has given us effective new tools for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s management and take the win.

But there’s no way to know whether any of those improvements came through Canadian-funded research. Considering how total US federal funding for medical research is expected to exceed $333 billion in 2025, whatever’s happening here in Canada feels like a bit of an afterthought.

And that’s besides the growing fears that most modern scientific research is worthless. Professor John P. A. Ioannidis has long been famous for his claims that:

"Many of the features that make clinical research useful can be identified, including those relating to problem base, context placement, information gain, pragmatism, patient centeredness, value for money, feasibility, and transparency. Many studies, even in the major general medical journals, do not satisfy these features, and very few studies satisfy most or all of them. Most clinical research therefore fails to be useful not because of its findings but because of its design.”

That describes incompetence and misaligned incentives. But we’ve recently seen how the academic publisher Wiley (which also publishes many of my books under its Sybex and For Dummies imprints) was forced to withdraw more than 11,000 academic papers and shut down 19 of its journals due to outright fraud.

So considering the state and orientation of the global research “industry,” Canada’s contributions to world health are probably negligible. But is all that research at least making a positive impact on our economy? After all, official government research funding announcements nearly always include the claim that public investments will lead to “wealth generation.” But does that actually happen?

It’s unlikely. Because research-driven wealth generation requires streamlined commercial access to research infrastructure and an economic environment that favors business investment. As Kyle Briggs - writing about technology research investment in general - notes:

“According to a small-scale study by Canadian IP leader Jim Hinton, as much as 75% of Canada’s AI-related IP leaves the country via the big tech firms and 18% collects dust in University tech transfer offices, while only 7% is actually being used in the Canadian private sector.”

Further:

“With so much of the IP developed in academia being licensed away before (the development) phase, the impact of (boosting R&D and intellectual property retention) will be diluted compared to their potential without first building the bridge between academic and industrial IP development. The current bridge, in the form of academic tech transfer offices, are insufficiently resourced and empowered to change this, and the results speak for themselves.”

And all that’s on top of the giant pink elephant happily munching shrubs in the middle of the room: who in his right mind would try to build a Canadian business knowing that the new capital gains inclusion rates will make it much harder to ever turn a profit?

Given all that, does it really make sense to spend so much public money on expensive research that probably won’t make a difference to either public health or the economy? Wouldn’t it make more sense to boost funding to more practical and attainable projects, like hitting our two percent NATO funding commitment?

I’m not saying that an effective military is necessarily more important than curing diseases. But it’s definitely better than pretending to cure diseases.