Another government report

There was a big interagency report released this week on breast cancer. This was the result of a requirement by a 2004 Act of Congress requiring Health and Human Services (and the creation of an alphabet soup agency - IBCERCC) to review "the current state of breast cancer and the environment research and make recommendations for eliminating any knowledge gaps in this area."

You can read more detail about the report, a summary of its findings, and the report itself (and the Act of Congress) here. If you google it, you can find oodles of information on it - critiquing the report, praising it, and summarizing it. Here's one article on it and another one.

My biggest take away, I have not read the report only the summary articles, is this (I can have an opinion even though I only read the Cliff notes version). :

"What’s needed is better coordination among researchers and increased research funding, according to the report."

I'm all for better coordination among researchers. I mean do they talk to each other and share their progress or do they sink into holes in the ground and focus on what they are doing and hide the results until they can get a patent or from fear someone will steal their idea? Or do they talk to each other and share progress between labs during the process?

All I can tell at this point is that it took an Act of Congress, a government report, an alphabet soup agency, and nine years to tell us sharing is good.