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FaD Stats - Oct 24, 2004

thanks for the stats Ross. Guess I am gonna have to try and hook up another pc, sure wish I had something faster, 500 mhz probably won't make much difference. The 2 I have running now were shutdown over the weekend but they are back up and running now. Sure wanna see us move up, not down. 🙁
 
My 1st reply got lost, so this may be a dupe message. For all you FaD users, I'm considering trying it out, but it bothers me that this consulting company that runs this is on the payroll in several ways. Not-for-profit means nothing anymore. They get consulting fees and sell our results via marketing agreements. I assume they also get a salary and other benefits. Has anyone seen the accounting of how much this group is paid and what the expenses are?
 
Originally posted by: leconc
My 1st reply got lost, so this may be a dupe message. For all you FaD users, I'm considering trying it out, but it bothers me that this consulting company that runs this is on the payroll in several ways. Not-for-profit means nothing anymore. They get consulting fees and sell our results via marketing agreements. I assume they also get a salary and other benefits. Has anyone seen the accounting of how much this group is paid and what the expenses are?
Click to expand...

Is this true? I always assumed that FaD was strictly for non-profit.

 
Originally posted by: leconc
My 1st reply got lost, so this may be a dupe message. For all you FaD users, I'm considering trying it out, but it bothers me that this consulting company that runs this is on the payroll in several ways. Not-for-profit means nothing anymore. They get consulting fees and sell our results via marketing agreements. I assume they also get a salary and other benefits. Has anyone seen the accounting of how much this group is paid and what the expenses are?
Click to expand...

I have no information with regards to this... perhaphs mondobyte has some insight.
 

Doesn't sound like a huge company full of greed to me.

"Treweren Consultants was formed in 1988 by Keith and Cathy Davies shortly after they sold their controlling shareholding in Chemical Design to Oxford Molecular (now part of Accelrys).

Keith founded Chemical Design in 1983, gained the Queens Award for Export in 1988, and took the company public in 1996. In his role as Technical Director, his primary contribution was the strategic direction of Chem-X, including the innovative development and application of 3D database and pharmacophore technology. In addition to running Treweren Consultants, he has an Honorary Research Fellowship at the Oxford University where in collaboration with Professor Graham Richards he pursues more academic interests. These include the CAN-DDO project - which aims to computationally screen some 3.5 billion molecules against 16 protein targets of potential interest in cancer therapy.

Cathy joined Chemical Design in 1984 and worked on Chem-X from its earliest days, both in customer support and in programming. She was responsible for implementing much of the pharmacophore technology, especially in receptor screening.

Treweren Consultants aims to work with a small number of companies who are interested in collaborative development of its innovative THINK software used for virtual screening and HTS data analysis. THINK is also used for the Find-a-Drug non-profit project run by Treweren Consultants. "
 
hey i found a cool stats site that i would like to share with those of you who dont already know of it...

linkage

i find that i get a ton of script errors on the find-a-drug official stats site and this one offers a ton of information. anyhow, just thought i would share because i thought it was pretty informative :beer:

 
I can't believe I'm the only one who sees the potential here for something fishy. While the project seems interesting, thats why I looked at it and am researching it, Treweren Consultants makes money consulting, licenseing and are most likely on the payroll. Getting paid is fine, but it appears to me that whether or not the company is profitable, two things stand out.

1. They are selling work that users donate. This is in direct contrast to most DC programs who do research for the science aspect. If and when a marketable solution is found, they make money and I would bet pay themselves more as their "work" increases.

2. "Not-For-Profit" is a term that many companies use as its easy to get and is a socially accepted phrase that implies the exact opposite of how many are run. That being said, I could find no financial information on FAD at all. Why not open the books for all users to see?

No doubt some of you will think how could anyone possibly question such a program. Its easy. This DC program stands out like a sore thumb, its based overseas, meaning more likely to not have as strict of regulations of any type, and most of their press releases are the same except for a few word changes. Maybe it is a real honest program, but the thought of and the appearance that they are selling work that users donate to make themselves money is wrong. And since I have computers built for and dedicated t DC projects, I'll make sure they are worth it. These are serious issues and would like serious, well researched replies, not "its a good program because....well, it just is".

 
There is no free lunch.

Every DC project must "profit" to remain extant. There are some like GRID that are so profit oriented that it makes me ill.

There are no "purely" philanthropic DC projects in existence.

Reality is difficult but ... here is the bet ... that the combined efforts will eradicate or reduce diseases -- that new drugs are available to cure my diseases down the road -- that human suffering (even if some humans profit) is lessened. Drug patents only last 17 years in the US ... diseases last a lifetime -- or less, if untreated.

Let us not get too bent out of shape on this ... there are no "lilly whites" out there - PERIOD.

From my perspective, the incremental cost of running a DC project over that of running a computer 24x7 because it NEEDS to run 24x7 for other purposes is well worth the investment and I have convinced many clients of this.

My opinion is that Find-a-Drug is one of the projects that makes my contributions worth the "bet"

 
Here is my opinion on the subject:

I donate $$$ to institutes to research diseases, wether it is the heart institute, cancer institute, diabetes institute, etc.

I believe a portion of my income is well spent contributing to the funding of these intitiatives and hopefully improving life and life expectancy for the world population.

So, I contribute my CPU cycles to what I consider is the BEST DC project out there and the one I believe is most likely to have the largest impact on my family's quality of life.

I believe in the cause so strongly I would even do this directly for the large pharamacutical companies, if I am not already 😉
 
The bottom line is run what you feel best about running. If you don't feel right about running FaD then don't but there are very few projects that are going to fit your guidelines if you did deep enough.
It cost money and time to devolop new drugs and unless you want the goverment to fund this research with your tax money there has to be a profit somewhere.
 
You guys made some excellent points. My criteria is no different than anyone who gives to a charity. We want to see our contribution go to the intended purpose, not padding someones pocket. In this case that my cpu time goes to make progress and is not just being sold to make a group money no matter the results. Thats a reasonable request. Maybe they are just more forward about their commercial marketing. I still would like to see some financial info on how much they are paying themselves. If its a real n-f-p organization, it would be a small amount. I can contact the consulting group if no one has checked on this before.
 
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