The struggle for grant funding

This week I got another grant rejection. This is my eighth in a row. To say this is a drag would be a bit of an understatement … this one seems to have plunged me into a bit of funk that I am having trouble rising out of. I feel like my ideas seem good — the internal reviews I get are all positive, too. So, why no funding?

I hear a lot of grumblings about it being money diverted away from the National Cancer Institute towards the War on Terror … Is that true? The National Institutes of Health funding was flat in 2007 and 2008 and other scientists and young investigators are clearly feeling the pinch.

I found one article outlining the ways in which the NIH budget is shrinking for the first time since 1970. Pharmaceutical company funding has increased in recent years, but it seems to me "Pharma" is most interested in clinical trials of new drugs or new combinations of drugs, and not in the area of my work (which is the effects of chemotherapy on cognition and mobility).

So, I am stuck. I feel jealous of my colleagues who do get funding because I wonder, "why not me?" and that affects my relationships at work. I resent older, established researchers who seem to get grants funded more easily, and wonder why the NCI can't throw a little of that love my way. My current funding dries up in August, and I am quite worried about where all this will leave me. This is nothing new for academic medicine docs, but it's new to me so I thought I would share.