Hi Vincent - the community already agreed to approve a feasibility study for VDP-17 . If you want to propose using VitaDAO funds for the Longevity Prize, this is great and you should consider a separate proposal. But I think it is not wasting money on a feasibility study showing the actual cost savings to backers so we can convince folks to support a much larger prize e.g. spending $40k to raise $1M+ or back an IVPE study that can create billions of dollars in cost savings (e.g. proving that ketamine at $2 a dose is equivalent or superior to esketamine at $850 a dose).
It’s very usual for large (institutional) funders to insist on such feasibility studies, especially if we are talking about a relatively novel and scalable mechanism of funding open source medicine. Doing a 180 now when CFC has been working on getting all the relevant stakeholders together and lined up contractors to conduct a feasibility study is not commercially appropriate and would mean other partners are much less likely to work with VitaDAO (i.e. if they are likely to flip at the last minute).
We can also use part of the funds to conduct a literature review and retrospective ketamine vs esketamine case study looking at existing data to predict the IVPE RCT outcome - this is funding actual clinical research and would support the feasibility study and getting backing for the IVPE RCT.