The Global Bioethics Blog marches on

Careful readers of this blog (with obviously way too much time on their hands) may have noticed, if they scroll all the way down to the bottom, that this blog is supported by a National Institutes of Health/Fogarty International Center bioethics grant. This is true, in a way: that grant pays a good portion of my salary, and I write this blog (albeit way after official working hours). And the grant also permits me to work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an engagement with Central Africa that acts as inspiration and fodder for many of these posts.

Last December, the grant was up for renewal and I was busy writing a new proposal for it. While doing so, I wondered about the fate of the Global Bioethics Blog if the renewal was unsuccessful. Maybe I would start up a new blog, in a more personal style. Maybe I would give blogging up entirely, as my time might be eaten up by efforts to scrape up funding from other sources. For those of us paid largely by 'soft money', unsuccessful grant applications are synonymous with unemployment. And bioethics grants are very few and far between.

Well, it looks like it is not coming to that. Notification came in last week that our project has been approved for funding. So as long as the US federal government does not go entirely bankrupt, we are set for the next four years. If they are anything like the last four years, it will be quite a ride.