Buchanan plans to continue to follow people with MS in nursing homes. Targeted investigations are areas of critical research in need of special emphasis. Current target research include studies on genetics and gender differences in MS, as well as the MS Lesion Project and the Sonya Slifka Longitudinal MS Study. The people who answer these questions for the National MS Society are committees of peer reviewers that is, scientists just like the applicants. Members of five scientific review committees peruse 300 or so grants for the Society each year.
All reviewers serve for three years, and no more than two terms.
This is a fair process, says John Fleming, MD, Professor of Neurology and Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, who recently ended his term as chair of one of the biomedical research committees. We do our best to determine the merit of the project it s not a matter of politics or favoritism. We want the Society s dollar to go as far as it can go. Several months later, the committee meets to discuss and evaluate the merits of each proposal. We give the grant two scores, for scientific merit and relevance to MS, comments Fleming.