You made one slight error: "Half of the babies don't like cupcakes, and one fifth of the babies left are too young to eat cupcakes." That only leaves one baby who's too young to eat cupcakes, so you need to add a baby to the "with sprinkles" group.
Here's a question I've sometimes considered: Does any measurement of a natural phenomenon equal or exceed a googolplex?
I don't think even the number of atoms in the universe equals a googolplex. Last time I did some wildly inaccurate napkin calculations, I was still about ten orders of magnitude short.
It would show definite evidence that man is affecting climate change.
"In response to the new NASA data, Democrats blamed the Bush administration for not funding research of more fuel-efficient Mars planetary explorers..."
I know this thread is past its sell-by date, and that our conversation has wound down (for now), so I'll keep my comments short.
Yeah, well, it would be better ensured by not allowing it at all, IMHO.
Well, it's impossible to completely disallow it. For instance, all phases of clinical trials require patients, which are only (efficiently) available through academic hospitals; and hospitals need money in order to conduct clinical trials. Similarly, companies need highly skilled, completely objective scientists to test their stuff, and universities are perfectly situated for that role.
For IP licensing, your suggestion may be possible. I don't think it would be beneficial, and I might cite the prior attempt as a counterexample; but your theory isn't unreasonable.
As I said; if you ever make a paper about the issue, I'll be interested to read it. Of course, you'll better make sure you have a lot more of hard data then Fortune, since you so lament the lack of it with them!:-)
Heh. Count on it. By sheer volume, it would probably be more citations than substance. I just don't see much point in going to that effort in, y'know, the Slashdot comments section.;)
This is a fact, because it's now mentioned on my blog.
Can't argue with that. And your blog is now bookmarkz0red. I'm always interested in opposing viewpoints; the day I stop learning about a field and questioning my own concepts is the day I switch to something new.
Thanks for the interesting discussion - this is a great way to end it. See you 'round.
Paparazzi Shields for famous celebrities. It's like a force field!
And also, fertile grounds for the class-action lawsuit craze of 2008. At least the court reporters will have some fun transcribing "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"
In an ideal world, everything would be balanced, no doubt. In reality, thinks go differently.
I understand and share your concerns about universities and corporations becoming bedfellows. But there are checks and balances in place. Some naturally flowing from the circumstances: e.g., corporations want to control the publishing rights of academics (in case a study comes out badly, Merck wants the right to squelch it), but researchers viciously defend this right, and are usually successful. Others are imposed upon the circumstances: e.g., every university has an independent IRB and a conflict-of-interest policy, both of which ensure that the academic center retains plausible objectivity in its dealings with corporate sponsors.
We have to be vigilant about this, but at present, I think it works OK.
Next thing they said, was that they would reduce the grants given...
And I think that would prompt an outcry from the scientific community, the likes of which we've not heard since... well, since the release of Michael Bay's Armageddon.;)
The trend has remained steadily in the opposite direction - over the past decade, NIH funding has increased every year. This is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. I think that even our stupid politicians understand that basic scientific research is a critical long-term driver of our economy.
If a company is interested in obtaining a patent, why not let him simply buy it from the state, with the provision it still can be used freely for academic use?
They can do that now. Under the Bayh-Dole Act, the federal government retains a license to any invention stemming from federally-sponsored research. I don't think that any law restricts its ability to exercise that right as it sees fit, including by licensing it to another company.
Well, then, maybe one should divise a system to stimulate that kind of tech-transfer, instead of letting corporations directly sponsor universitary research?
They did. It's called the Bayh-Dole Act.;)
If you're arguing that the prior model was well-grounded but badly implemented, I might agree with you. I don't think there's a systematic reason why government licensing wouldn't work. But I don't think any of us are feeling particularly confident in the federal government's ability to do anything these days.
I have the impression you will never be convinced by any data, if that data indeed indicates a decline in R&D, etc. But maybe I'm wrong.
Let ye who is without bias cast the first stone...;)
The greatest lesson I learned in law school was not argumentation, but objectivity. When you're designing a solution to a problem, you have to look at the problem as an aggregate, without disproportionate deference to the particular interets any one party. I think I'm doing that, as far as America's drug development model is concerned. If you show me a model that produces better, faster, safer, and cheaper drugs, I'll go for it.
They only work to "prove different arguments" if you assume basic research and the commercial licensing of it are two completely separate activities. They are not...
*sigh* As with your tiresome "you didn't read the article" assertions, your attempt to prove that "they are the same" by sheer repetition isn't getting you anywhere.
I have worked in the commercial licensing arena for over three years. I can tell you from experience that academic research and pharmaceutical research are about as different as they possibly can be, not only at my institution but at every academic institution I've ever encountered. You may as well equate novel-writing and library science, or automotive design and gasoline production, or filmmaking and DVD player design. One process produces a raw material that the other consumes, and that is the extent of the relationship.
You don't have to believe me. I really don't care, because I'm done arguing with you.
To the extent the rise in prices for services reflects monopolistic production, this is what people refer to when they claim to be "paying twice": once for for the research and one for the privilege of buying a product from a single producer at prices far above the cost of production.
Your theory about price doesn't change the fact that my original post didn't address a rise in prices.
...another lie of yours in claiming that the only facts in the piece are on page 4 (possibly because it's the only section you've been forced to read), let us wade out to page 7-8 for a very concrete example:
That's classic. You can't tell the difference between "data" and "anecdote?" No wonder you've had trouble following my arguments.
If you fail to see the objection or believe that it is "impossible" to make this claim I would hazard that you have never taken a course in economics.
You're just not following my arguments at all - as demonstrated by your 100% incorrect summary of my first post. Since you can't bother to read what I've written before responding, I'm done with you.
I think that, while not completely the same (it never is), it's analogous enough to warrant the proposition that the same link may be applicable.
Here's why I think it's non-analogous. The primary reason that IP-developing businesses might have their research waylaid is the threat of a patent infringement lawsuit over their IP-containing products. Academic researchers, both in biotech and in software, have no such fears because they create no such products, and are never sued.
Look at it this way. In order to sue for a patent, a company needs to demonstrate some kind of damages - in most cases, loss of business. The law usually requires this as part of a valid complaint; and much more importantly, profit-driven corporations aren't going to waste tons of money enforcing patents without a commercial advantage.
Now, what kind of commercial advantage do businesses derive by enforcing their patents against researchers? None. That's why they are almost never sued, even when their research clearly infringes.
The most recent lawsuit involving patent-infringing academic research (Merck v. Integra Life Sciences, finally settled by the SCOTUS) ended up considerably broadening the "experimental use" exception to patent infringement.
Surely you must acknowledge that, when your focus becomes more and more profit driven (and everybody, including universities, like to earn increasing amount of money, naturally) then you are less and less inclined to fund projects which show little profit-potential.
Ah, but here is a very important point.
An overwhelming proportion of the money that runs academic research derives from grants, either from a government body (including the NIH or DoD) or from a private foundation (like the American Heart Association.) For all of these groups, the decision of these groups on whether or not to fund a project depends most heavily on the scientific importance of the proposal. The possibility of commercializable results is a consideration, but it's not centrally important.
By contrast, with a few notable exceptions, universities derive very little profit from technology transfer, licensing, commercialization, etc. Virtually all technology transfer groups are doing well if they just break even. (Like the Fortune article, I have seen supporting data, but I can't cite it.;) At least I can supply a good excuse: the data derives from a private study conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).)
In short, any academic group hoping to make tech transfer a profit center (and gear its efforts in that direction) is going to be sorely disappointed. That's not what it does.
So what is the goal of tech transfer, if not profit? It's threefold:
The noble aspect: Academia wants new technologies as badly as you do. When a researcher creates an invention with a useful purpose, the university wants to see that purpose realized.
The networking aspect: Tech transfer with other institutions helps foster research collaboration.
The "bragging rights" aspect: Universities use their metrics about inventions and patents as a way of showing the collective skill and creativity of their researchers.
The regulatory aspect: The Bayh-Dole Act wasn't merely a gift of IP to institutions. Such ownership was made contingent upon a duty to commercialize the inventions. If universities don't actively work to exploit their inventions, they could get sanctioned by the federal government, and may even be denied funding in the future.
...but universities already get money; from the state, and thus, from the taxes we pay.
Sure, and I agree that this would be a poor motivation, since universities derive little or no profit from tech transfer. But rather, I meant that money fuels the product-development process - i.e., pharmaceutical companies. If they didn't have a revenue stream secured by a patent, they wouldn't heavily invest
Maybe their offices were destroyed by a fleet of Vogon construction crew.
(I can't be the only one to have had an instant associative link between "Uncyclopedia stands for everything Wikipedia cannot have: misinformation, satire, and lies" and the "Don't Panic! logo.)
If I'd known that, the ad hominem would have been much, much worse.
Thanks for establishing your irrelevance.
I wholeheartedly encourage you to continue holding your rabid malice. That will ensure that no one will ever take you seriously, and that you remain on the fringe where your unrealistic views can't do any damage to the system. Meanwhile, I'll continue working in the industry and will help shape IP policy.
And, unless you have data which would contradict what they have (which you don't), the data they provide - incomplete with sources as it may be - do indicate some support for what they claim.
But that support is about as minimal as it can be. I can claim to have seen evidence that UFOs landed in Roswell. If I don't tell you what that evidence is, I have eviscerated the assertion, because you can't check it. I guess it adds an iota more support than not claiming to have seen evidence at all... but it's a very small iota.;)
Your personal belief that one 'has to' restrain the pool of ideas in order to compel people to perform the 'other 99%' is irrelevant (or at least should be) in discussing the point the paper made.
Isn't the central point of the article that the Bayh-Dole Act is (a) unnecessarily stifling academic research and (b) not really spurring drug innovation?
My comment about the 1% vs. 99% exactly bears on both points. The academic research is the 1%; drug innovation is the 99%. It is possible that patenting the use of a particular protein to cure a particular disease may stifle research by other scientists into the use of that protein for that disease. (In fact, I don't see it that way, but let's say it does.) My point is that we have to permit this stifling of the other research - the 1% - in order to compel a pharmaceutical company develop a drug based on the idea - the 99%.
That would depend on the question whether or not the person in question has RTFA.;-)
'k... I think we've beaten this side-issue into the ground, so let's part amicably on it and move on to more central issues.
At least with software-patents there already has been research that showed the link...
If you're arguing that software companies are diverting reseach funds, then I have to agree with you. I also think it's non-analogous.
With software companies, you have the same group developing the software (potentially creating a software invention) and also selling it. If one pot of research money has to fund both activities, then it's quite logical that legal costs derived from the latter activity would entail a reduction of funds for the former activity.
But software and biotech are very different industries. The key difference here is that the "inventing" group is a wholly different entity than the "selling" group. The inventors actually have very little concern about infringement; it's tough to envision a scenario where they could get sued. They can't even be sued if their inventions infringe others: every IP license on the planet shifts 100% of infringement liability to the licensee. (The only potential liability for the inventors/university is whether the inventors failed to conduct due diligence - i.e., if they know the invention infringes a patent, they can't fraudulently license their claimed IP as non-infringing. But that's a contractual issue between the inventors and the licensee.)
I'd like to suggest a closer analogy. Have software patents impacted academic computer science research? I don't think it has, and I haven't seen anything to that effect. (If anything, it's increased such research, as CS academicians can now publish articles on the evil software patent system.;) )
You came up with a whole theory of why it was actually beneficial - but without providing any evidence, not even the meager evidence you claim Fortune is using.
Sure, but the context is totally different. I'm not writing an article. I'm posting some off-handed comments in a web forum. When I write articles on this (or any other) topic, you can expect that they are supported by dozens of citations to federal government statistics.
His point was, that without the strong emphasis on commercialisation that is rampant today (and to which the amendment of the law contributed) universities were more inclined to do fundamental research, while now they are more and more inclined to do 'rapid-potential-profit' research.
I'm having trouble with this notion of "rapid potential profit," because very few technology licenses embody anything of the sort. Yes, the once-in-a-lifetime, "oh my god this is awesome" kind of invention involves a large up-front payment to the university. (That's what happened in the case of Emory - as described in TFA - which, yes, I did read.;) To be fair, I'd read about Emory a few weeks ago.)
But most cases of university technology licensing involve much-delayed profit, in the form of a royalty stream from ongoing product sales. It usually takes a year or several to get the product on the shelf, and even then, the royalties start small and slowly build over time. There is nothing "rapid" about this.
The author of that comment had some notion that university researchers were being turned into product-development guys. Based on my experience, nothing like this is happening. The primary source of pressure on researchers is to get federal grant money - not to invent valuable IP.
Ofcourse, when you consider monetary income als THE goal of businesses and and universities alike, then this consideration may hold no value for you.
I don't view money as THE goal. I view money as the fuel for the process that achieves THE goal, which is to maximize technological progress. I want to see new, useful treatments for every known disease. My
Frankly, if you don't think that the number of drugs shortlisted for "priority" testing by the FDA is a good metric for biomedical research you need to take some science courses.
Jesus. Seriously, are we even speaking the same language? Is your browser filtering everything I write through Babelfish's English/Cantonese filter and then back again before displaying it to you?
My original post argued none of the points you just indicated. Let me tackle each in turn:
(1) that Bayh-Dole did not lead to an increase in the patenting of research,
Wrong. I argued that the Bayh-Dole Act did not change the patent system in any way. That's why I wrote: "Before the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, universities could patent inventions; after the Act, universities can still patent inventions, in exactly the same manner (foregoing the completely unrelated changes in patent law.)"
If you'd asked me whether the Bayh-Dole Act had increased university patenting, I would have responded, Absolutely! It has certainly increased the number of patents held by my academic research center - we file over 100 applications/year, and this figure grows every year.
But here's what the Act didn't change: (1) how those patents are obtained through the USPTO, (2) what kinds of technologies can be patented, (3) the scope of enforceability of the ensuing patent, (4) the prosecution and litigation costs of the patent... etc...
My point, as I originally wrote it and as I write it now, is that the Bayh-Dole Act deals with who gets to commercialize te patent. That is, who owns the rights to the invention, including the rights to any ensuing patents, and what they can do with them. The Bayh-Dole Act only changed ownership rights to the technology, including rights the subsequent patents. This has certainly had an effect on patent activity, but the Act itself did not change anything about the actual patents or the process of obtaining or enforcing them.
My argument here hasn't changed one bit in the last 24 hours - as it shouldn't have, because I was right. Any perceived shifting is the product of your addled reading comprehension skills.
(2) it did not result in higher costs to consumers,
Wrong. Neither my original post nor any of my ensuing posts discussed whether prices have risen. I don't even think that question has meaning, because my argument has been that without the Bayh-Dole Act, they wouldn't have had a product to buy. It's impossible to argue a price differential between one scenario where the product is available, and one where it's not.
What my original post discussed was the philosophical component of that price - whether the patient has already paid for the drug by way of federal taxes. I don't believe that's true. I believe that federal grants are used to create the idea, and the consumer's payment is for the implementation of that idea as a drug. They are not "paying twice," philosophically.
Again, that was my original argument, and I have maintained it up to and including this post. As I noted, the assertion that you thought I was making is not only nowhere in my posts, but is nonsensical.
(3) it did not have a negative effect on research.
Wrong. Closer, but but still wrong. My original post did not discuss the impact of Bayh-Dole on research in any way. I did mention the impact of Bayh-Dole on pharmaceutical company productivity, which is completely different. And I did mention the effect of Bayh-Dole on academic research in subsequent posts. But again, you're incorrect in summarizing my original post this way.
And your first salvo of idiocy was arguing that the piece only had a single metric on which to back its generalizations about problems that the Bayh-Dole act created for research.
You keep making these ridiculous mistakes. It's really getting tiresome.
I did originally state that the article mentions only a single metric to
Ad hominem attacks on me aren't stopping you from looking like an ass...
There's nothing ad hominem about what I wrote. You may not like it; that doesn't make it unfair. You have now demonstrated five very basic reading comprehension errors in your posts. I am merely pointing that out.
What you characterized as crappy was clearly a completely bogus claim that the article is based on one measure of research productivity.
Now you're just confusing yourself.
We've had two parallel but distinct arguments here:
How the article supports its notion that U.S. academic research has slowed down due to the Bayh-Dole Act - which was supported by one metric that is, at best, very indirect.
How the article supports its notion that pharmaceutical company productivity has not grown as a result of the Bayh-Dole Act - which it supported with a few barely-quantitative criteria ranging from poor to flat-out lies (as I demonstrated above.)
Frankly, if you don't think that the number of drugs shortlisted for "priority" testing by the FDA is a good metric for biomedical research you need to take some science courses.
Now you're just not reading at all. My criticism wasn't about the correlation between FDA-approved drugs and biomedical research productivity. That's fine. My criticism was that the metric was offered as a comparison, to show the effect of the Bayh-Dole Act - yet the numbers compared were both well after the Act was passed. They show nothing about the impact of the Act, because they fail to indicate what things were like before the Act went into effect.
Why stop with the snippet? Why not read the whole bloody article?
Let me refresh your memory for how we got here. I indicated that the article presented virtually no evidence to support its conclusion. You posted a snippet, indicating that that's where the evidence was. I shredded it. Now you want to just make a blanket hand-wave gesture toward the rest of the article and say, "It's somewhere in there."
It's not in there. Just like it wasn't in the excerpt you posted. Go ahead - prove me wrong.
Of course there are ways to critique the data, which makes it surprising that all of your critiques are responses to data in the snippets of article that I've posted.
That's because these are the only pieces of "evidence" in the entire article to support the notion that the Bayh-Dole Act is slowing down research. The rest is anecdote, supposition, dramatic quotes, and unrelated material. Again - I challenge you to prove me wrong.
71 drugs a year is not an improvement over 18 drugs a year if the remaining 53 don't do anything.
Incredible. Apparently, you can make a serious reading comprehension error even in a single sentence.
That sentence doesn't indicate that they "don't do anything." It indicates that they "did not show any survival benefit over the old, standard care." In other words:
1) They prolong life of cancer patients just as well as previously known therapies. That's a damn site better than "not doing anything."
2) Drugs have lots of properties - survival rate is not the sole feature of a cancer drug. They may have reduced side effects, like less hair loss or nausea. They may have fewer adverse drug interactions. They may be administered in a more convenient form, like a tablet instead of a horse pill.
Now you're 0/5 in terms of reading comprehension, having made five serious errors in four posts. Jesus, that's amazing. Zoloft, buddy - seriously.
I do not know anyone who has ever taken out a patent for the federal government.
Who mentioned anything about a patent "for" the federal government?
Out of three comments this evening, you are 0/4 for reading comprehension. That may be a Slashdot record. Seriously - Zoloft - it will do you some good.
Your claim that the number of drugs under testing for public release is a "crappy" metric for drug-focused innovation is specious.
What I characterized as "crappy" was the reference to the percentage of academic publications by America vs. the rest of the world, as an indication that U.S. research is slowing down because of the Bayh-Dole Act. I wasn't referring to "the number of drugs under testing for public release" or "drug-focused innovation" when I made that statement.
Seriously, your reading comprehension is just terrible. You should consider asking your doctor if you have ADHD before posting again. They make drugs for that, you know.
You're not understanding how this works. Researchers could freely apply for patents before the Bayh-Dole Act, exactly as they could after the Bayh-Dole Act. In each era, the patents were prosecuted in almost exactly the same manner, and would eventually issue in the names of the researchers. Nothing here has changed about how "researchers get patents."
What changed, and what the snippet you posted mentions, relates to the rights conferred by the patent. The federal government used to own those rights, to the exclusion of the university, but the researchers could ask the government to give those rights back. Now the university initially owns them, subject to certain rights reserved to the government. Who owns the rights to the patent is a wholly different concept from how researchers "get" patents - which has not changed.
You seem to have this recurring problem of pasting text, and then drawing a summary of it that's completely wrong. You might want to mention this problem to your doctor - he might be able to prescribe something to help your reading comprehension.
By having the university be the license seller, it puts universities and researchers in competition with each other.
It does? Really?
They probably do compete when two groups independently discover the same thing. But that's been true of science since the days of ancient Greece. Nothing about patents, pharmaceuticals, or the Bayh-Dole Act changed that aspect of science one whit.
Now consider the normal case, not involving a conflict over priority of a single invention. When a researcher and university find a potential drug target, they spend the following months and years talking to pharmaceutical companies about licensing. The struggle here is solely between the university and the pharmaceutical company to establish a fair license price. There is very little interaction or competition with other universities, which are licensing other drugs for other purposes. I'm not sure how that "competition" would even work.
...which means they don't want to share interim results...
Not really. Researchers still publish and present their results all the time. The only difference is that the university makes them tell their technology transfer office about it beforehand, and help them get a patent application on file. It's really a pretty minor effect.
Even where the researcher doesn't want to publish the results yet, they still get to share their data and materials with other institutions. It's done under a pretty standard contract, like a confidentiality or materials transfer areement, that explicitly prohibits the receiving institution from running off with the data. In fact, this is nothing new - it's just that instead of having unwritten rules of decorum about using each other's data, now the rules are written up in a contract.
...sue each other...
Universities and researchers sue each other? Show me where they do that. Most IP lawsuits in this field are contract disputes between universities and their licensees, or patent disputes between pharmaceutical companies.
...act like corporations...
Academic institutions have been gradually acting more like corporations for the last 100 years. Has nothing to do with IP. Has everything to do with an increased emphasis on efficiency in academia.
And researchers don't act like corporations. They still act like researchers. They do everything that researchers did 30 years ago: spend time in the lab, write up grant applications, publish, travel to conferences. Their lives have not really changed.
I'm glad you agree. Hopefully you'll also agree that it really doesn't belong in any substantive discussion. If I missed something from the article, you can fairly cite what I missed in a counterargument; but accusing me of not having read the article adds nothing to the discussion, and really just adds a distracting confrontational edge.
Too bad it took a beating to get you to support some of your assertions.
I'm not actually here to make any assertions, since it's not my article. I'm here to discuss the amazingly weak assertions in the Fortune article. When I write my own article about the benefits of the Bayh-Dole Act, then you can ask for, and fairly expect, some data to back up my assertions.
What we do know though is that IP lawsuits have increased dramatically as a result of this enactment...
Frankly - so what? These lawsuits are just disputes between pharmaceutical companies, or between universities and pharmaceutical companies over licenses. How does the presence or absence of lawsuits affect the rate of technology development? You can't just imply a link here.
...and that the focus of universities has shifted from fundamental science to immediately profitable science.
Where did you get that notion? The whole point of basic research is that it's not "immediately profitable," or even certain to be profitable in the long run. If it were, pharmaceutical companies would trip over themselves to do it in-house. The fact that we rely (hugely) on the federal government to fund it disproves your point.
And exactly how do you think you get to that stage? By just picking a random drug? No - there's research involved to get to that stage. Academics remove the biggest cost pharmaceuticals face - risk.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand how these inventions get made.
Usually, it goes like this:
A researcher observes something interesting about a mechanism in molecular biology - something like, "protein X appears to activate protein Y, which causes a disease; maybe we can stop the disease by preventing the expression of protein X." The end result may be some data showing that the deactivation of this protein in an animal model of the disease seems to prevent the disease. All of this "basic" research is wholly funded by the federal government.
The observation is licensed to a pharmaceutical company, which finds or synthesizes a drug that successfully implements the concept in humans. All of this "drug discovery" research is performed in-house by the company, and the company bears all of the expense.
The drug is given to academic researchers and clinicians who want to test it. The pharmaceutical company pays 100% of the outside researchers' costs in testing the drug for the company.
In your previous post, you were trying to assert that drug testing, the third step, is performed by academicians under their federal grants. You were wrong. It is performed by academicians, but is wholly funded by the companies that own the drugs. In fact, the academicians host no "risk" whatsoever at this stage. They get paid whether or not the study works; they get to publish the results no matter what those results show; they bear no liability for the effects of the drug.
It might help if you read what you copy-and-paste before you draw conclusions about it.
Look at that snippet. What does it involve?
Metrics contrasting 1996 vs. 2003, which are pretty much useless for drawing conclusions about the consequences of the Bayh-Dole Act - which was passed in 1980 and took effect in 1981. In case you're really not following this, I'll spell it out for you: they might have instead compared the period before the Bayh-Dole Act took effect vs. the period after the Bayh-Dole Act took effect. That would have been a little more insightful.
Some unrelated metrics about the death rates for diabetics in 1977 vs. today. Last I checked, diabetes was not the kind of disease that we control with drugs, but with supplements of the natural hormone called "insulin." Weight loss and diet are also crucial factors, and coincidentally, both weight and diet have gotten much worse in America over the past 25 years. My point is that death rates for diabetics have little or nothing to do with the productivity (or any facet) of the pharmaceutical industry.
A spurious quote about patients with neurological conditions anxiously awaiting new drugs. This is where Fortune really loses its grip on reality. Consider:
Alzheimer's: link - "For some people in the early and middle stages of the disease, the drugs tacrine (Cognex), donepezil (Aricept), rivastigmine (Exelon), or galantamine (Razadyne, previously known as Reminyl) may help prevent some symptoms from becoming worse for a limited time. Another drug, memantine (Namenda), has been approved to treat moderate to severe AD, although it also is limited in its effects."
Parkinson's: link - here is a list of 16 drugs that are useful for treating Parkinson's. Many of these are pretty recent, if my memory is correct.
Multiple sclerosis: link - five new drugs are on the market for treating MS. In fact, these drugs are amazing - a weekly injection of Avonex essentially halts and reverses the progression of MS. I have personally witnessed this with a family member.
In other words, we have great new drugs for all three conditions. The fact that Fortune tried to bolster its argument with a comment that is so demonstrably false is indicative of its overall sloppiness.
A factoid about the efficacy of new cancer drugs. This doesn't change the fact that we have 71 new cancer drugs on the market since 1990, which, in fact, seems like quite a brisk pace of inventing new drugs. More importantly, the factoid suggests that 53 of the drugs don't have improved survival benefits - might they have other benefits, like reduced side effects, easier administration, etc.? (If not, then why is the FDA approving them?
So I stand by my earlier statement that Fortune's "data" is paper-thin and provides precious little support for its conclusion. If you'd actually read the excerpt with an ounce of objectivity before pasting it here, you'd have seen that yourself.
Even the parent poster didn't say 'everything', but in any case, you seem to have a tendency to go for the semantics or your own interpretation of what is said, rather then the obvious meaning of the arguments.
:shrug: You're focusing on the "everything" part. Since my first response to this guy/post, I have been focusing on the "automatically" part, or as the parent poster wrote it, the "*automatically*" part. As in: "researchers could not *automatically* get patents for federally-funded research" in drawing some kind of before/after contrast vis-a-vis Bayh-Dole.
I have no idea what that means. Does he think that, at one point, researchers were automatically granted patents upon application? Or that, either before or after, they were not permitted to file for patents for federally-funded research? Or that the federal government "automatically" filed patent applications on their behalf?
None of these interpretations make any sense. Nothing about patents is "automatic" that was non-"automatic" before, nor vice versa. I honestly can't tell what he meant by this. That's why I asked him to clarify, which is when you stepped in.
And your much smaller leap to substantiate your theory is..what, exactly?
I don't have to prove my theory to anyone. I didn't write an article of any kind (though I may in the near future - in a slightly more academic journal than Fortune - as this is a topic of great interest to me.) I'm mainly here to criticize the presumptive conclusions from the article, and from the Slashdot crowd.
Are you suggesting their conclusions or claims in these matters are untrue, or merely inadequately referenced with sources?
Yes. I'm suggesting that they have been somewhat sloppy and cursory in the factual backing for the conclusions they have drawn. This is Fortune Magazine - it's like a version of Teen Magazine for the Chief (.*) Officer crowd: very fluffy, mostly op-ed, no real analysis or hard data. That's its reputation, and it has earned it well.
...even if they did provide a link as source, one could always claim it's untrue.
Hardly. Elsewhere in this thread, I (and others) posted data about the percentage of Americans with health insurance, and cited the U.S. Census. I also cited the growing trend in federal funding of research, which I pulled from the NIH website. There are certainly reliable sources out there - Fortune just chose not to cite any, any at all, for the few scraps of data that form the keystone of its argument.
I doubt you would be more happy if they had said a '20% decline', for instance...
At least that's a step toward verifiable. "Worse" is so... qualitative.
Ermm... you are unable to get your capitalistic-orientated mind of anything but money, are you?
Back up the train of thought a second. As a counter to my complaint about Fortune's lack of data, you referenced their citation on university research. That citation of theirs took the form of money (and patents.) Though I approve of it as a metric, it wasn't my choice to use money here - it was Fortune's.
A cursory scroll through the posts would make it clear to you that sentence was not from me, but from the parent poster.
Yeah, but you chose to castigate me over not adopting the literal meaning of the original poster, from which you apparently derived some kind of meaning. My point is that it has no cognizable literal meaning - it's jibberish. "Research" doesn't "flow" anywhere.
The only one who is completely focused and sees it as the crux of the debate, is you.
Not really. When I advocate for the patent system, and for the licensing method for drugs, I'm doing so for the sake of innovation. I don't care about the money; I want to see the U.S. push technology forward as fast as possible. The cash flow is an enabling means to that end.
In reality, he, as well as I, are talking about what the a
The point of the article is that there has been a striking DROP in innovative drug creation. This is hard evidence, and its particarly striking if your claim of increased federal funding for drug research is true.
What is the "hard evidence?" The fact that Fortune wrote that it's true, and that you want to believe them? I'm guessing you're a fan of Fox News.
"Hard evidence" involves facts and data, not buzz-clips and cursory conclusions. Point to some realistic data that shows that "innovative drug creation" is dropping. If you go back and review the Fortune article, you'll find very little in the way of data. It's just not that kind of magazine.
Slashdot Mirror
- David Stein
Damnit, I almost snorked part of an egg roll into my lungs when I saw that. :chuckle: Well done.
- David Stein
I don't think even the number of atoms in the universe equals a googolplex. Last time I did some wildly inaccurate napkin calculations, I was still about ten orders of magnitude short.
- David Stein
If I hadn't added that disclaimer, I would've been modded down as a troll. :shakes head: People have no sense of humor about politics any more.
- David Stein
"In response to the new NASA data, Democrats blamed the Bush administration for not funding research of more fuel-efficient Mars planetary explorers..."
- David Stein
Yeah, well, it would be better ensured by not allowing it at all, IMHO.
Well, it's impossible to completely disallow it. For instance, all phases of clinical trials require patients, which are only (efficiently) available through academic hospitals; and hospitals need money in order to conduct clinical trials. Similarly, companies need highly skilled, completely objective scientists to test their stuff, and universities are perfectly situated for that role.
For IP licensing, your suggestion may be possible. I don't think it would be beneficial, and I might cite the prior attempt as a counterexample; but your theory isn't unreasonable.
As I said; if you ever make a paper about the issue, I'll be interested to read it. Of course, you'll better make sure you have a lot more of hard data then Fortune, since you so lament the lack of it with them! :-)
Heh. Count on it. By sheer volume, it would probably be more citations than substance. I just don't see much point in going to that effort in, y'know, the Slashdot comments section. ;)
This is a fact, because it's now mentioned on my blog.
Can't argue with that. And your blog is now bookmarkz0red. I'm always interested in opposing viewpoints; the day I stop learning about a field and questioning my own concepts is the day I switch to something new.
Thanks for the interesting discussion - this is a great way to end it. See you 'round.
- David Stein
And also, fertile grounds for the class-action lawsuit craze of 2008. At least the court reporters will have some fun transcribing "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"
- David Stein
I understand and share your concerns about universities and corporations becoming bedfellows. But there are checks and balances in place. Some naturally flowing from the circumstances: e.g., corporations want to control the publishing rights of academics (in case a study comes out badly, Merck wants the right to squelch it), but researchers viciously defend this right, and are usually successful. Others are imposed upon the circumstances: e.g., every university has an independent IRB and a conflict-of-interest policy, both of which ensure that the academic center retains plausible objectivity in its dealings with corporate sponsors.
We have to be vigilant about this, but at present, I think it works OK.
Next thing they said, was that they would reduce the grants given...
And I think that would prompt an outcry from the scientific community, the likes of which we've not heard since... well, since the release of Michael Bay's Armageddon. ;)
The trend has remained steadily in the opposite direction - over the past decade, NIH funding has increased every year. This is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. I think that even our stupid politicians understand that basic scientific research is a critical long-term driver of our economy.
If a company is interested in obtaining a patent, why not let him simply buy it from the state, with the provision it still can be used freely for academic use?
They can do that now. Under the Bayh-Dole Act, the federal government retains a license to any invention stemming from federally-sponsored research. I don't think that any law restricts its ability to exercise that right as it sees fit, including by licensing it to another company.
Well, then, maybe one should divise a system to stimulate that kind of tech-transfer, instead of letting corporations directly sponsor universitary research?
They did. It's called the Bayh-Dole Act. ;)
If you're arguing that the prior model was well-grounded but badly implemented, I might agree with you. I don't think there's a systematic reason why government licensing wouldn't work. But I don't think any of us are feeling particularly confident in the federal government's ability to do anything these days.
I have the impression you will never be convinced by any data, if that data indeed indicates a decline in R&D, etc. But maybe I'm wrong.
Let ye who is without bias cast the first stone... ;)
The greatest lesson I learned in law school was not argumentation, but objectivity. When you're designing a solution to a problem, you have to look at the problem as an aggregate, without disproportionate deference to the particular interets any one party. I think I'm doing that, as far as America's drug development model is concerned. If you show me a model that produces better, faster, safer, and cheaper drugs, I'll go for it.
- David Stein
*sigh* As with your tiresome "you didn't read the article" assertions, your attempt to prove that "they are the same" by sheer repetition isn't getting you anywhere.
I have worked in the commercial licensing arena for over three years. I can tell you from experience that academic research and pharmaceutical research are about as different as they possibly can be, not only at my institution but at every academic institution I've ever encountered. You may as well equate novel-writing and library science, or automotive design and gasoline production, or filmmaking and DVD player design. One process produces a raw material that the other consumes, and that is the extent of the relationship.
You don't have to believe me. I really don't care, because I'm done arguing with you.
To the extent the rise in prices for services reflects monopolistic production, this is what people refer to when they claim to be "paying twice": once for for the research and one for the privilege of buying a product from a single producer at prices far above the cost of production.
Your theory about price doesn't change the fact that my original post didn't address a rise in prices.
That's classic. You can't tell the difference between "data" and "anecdote?" No wonder you've had trouble following my arguments.
If you fail to see the objection or believe that it is "impossible" to make this claim I would hazard that you have never taken a course in economics.
You're just not following my arguments at all - as demonstrated by your 100% incorrect summary of my first post. Since you can't bother to read what I've written before responding, I'm done with you.
- David Stein
Here's why I think it's non-analogous. The primary reason that IP-developing businesses might have their research waylaid is the threat of a patent infringement lawsuit over their IP-containing products. Academic researchers, both in biotech and in software, have no such fears because they create no such products, and are never sued.
Look at it this way. In order to sue for a patent, a company needs to demonstrate some kind of damages - in most cases, loss of business. The law usually requires this as part of a valid complaint; and much more importantly, profit-driven corporations aren't going to waste tons of money enforcing patents without a commercial advantage.
Now, what kind of commercial advantage do businesses derive by enforcing their patents against researchers? None. That's why they are almost never sued, even when their research clearly infringes.
The most recent lawsuit involving patent-infringing academic research (Merck v. Integra Life Sciences, finally settled by the SCOTUS) ended up considerably broadening the "experimental use" exception to patent infringement.
Surely you must acknowledge that, when your focus becomes more and more profit driven (and everybody, including universities, like to earn increasing amount of money, naturally) then you are less and less inclined to fund projects which show little profit-potential.
Ah, but here is a very important point. An overwhelming proportion of the money that runs academic research derives from grants, either from a government body (including the NIH or DoD) or from a private foundation (like the American Heart Association.) For all of these groups, the decision of these groups on whether or not to fund a project depends most heavily on the scientific importance of the proposal. The possibility of commercializable results is a consideration, but it's not centrally important.
By contrast, with a few notable exceptions, universities derive very little profit from technology transfer, licensing, commercialization, etc. Virtually all technology transfer groups are doing well if they just break even. (Like the Fortune article, I have seen supporting data, but I can't cite it. ;) At least I can supply a good excuse: the data derives from a private study conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).)
In short, any academic group hoping to make tech transfer a profit center (and gear its efforts in that direction) is going to be sorely disappointed. That's not what it does.
So what is the goal of tech transfer, if not profit? It's threefold:
Sure, and I agree that this would be a poor motivation, since universities derive little or no profit from tech transfer. But rather, I meant that money fuels the product-development process - i.e., pharmaceutical companies. If they didn't have a revenue stream secured by a patent, they wouldn't heavily invest
(I can't be the only one to have had an instant associative link between "Uncyclopedia stands for everything Wikipedia cannot have: misinformation, satire, and lies" and the "Don't Panic! logo.)
- David Stein
Thanks for establishing your irrelevance.
I wholeheartedly encourage you to continue holding your rabid malice. That will ensure that no one will ever take you seriously, and that you remain on the fringe where your unrealistic views can't do any damage to the system. Meanwhile, I'll continue working in the industry and will help shape IP policy.
- David Stein
But that support is about as minimal as it can be. I can claim to have seen evidence that UFOs landed in Roswell. If I don't tell you what that evidence is, I have eviscerated the assertion, because you can't check it. I guess it adds an iota more support than not claiming to have seen evidence at all... but it's a very small iota. ;)
Your personal belief that one 'has to' restrain the pool of ideas in order to compel people to perform the 'other 99%' is irrelevant (or at least should be) in discussing the point the paper made.
Isn't the central point of the article that the Bayh-Dole Act is (a) unnecessarily stifling academic research and (b) not really spurring drug innovation?
My comment about the 1% vs. 99% exactly bears on both points. The academic research is the 1%; drug innovation is the 99%. It is possible that patenting the use of a particular protein to cure a particular disease may stifle research by other scientists into the use of that protein for that disease. (In fact, I don't see it that way, but let's say it does.) My point is that we have to permit this stifling of the other research - the 1% - in order to compel a pharmaceutical company develop a drug based on the idea - the 99%.
- David Stein
'k... I think we've beaten this side-issue into the ground, so let's part amicably on it and move on to more central issues.
At least with software-patents there already has been research that showed the link...
If you're arguing that software companies are diverting reseach funds, then I have to agree with you. I also think it's non-analogous.
With software companies, you have the same group developing the software (potentially creating a software invention) and also selling it. If one pot of research money has to fund both activities, then it's quite logical that legal costs derived from the latter activity would entail a reduction of funds for the former activity.
But software and biotech are very different industries. The key difference here is that the "inventing" group is a wholly different entity than the "selling" group. The inventors actually have very little concern about infringement; it's tough to envision a scenario where they could get sued. They can't even be sued if their inventions infringe others: every IP license on the planet shifts 100% of infringement liability to the licensee. (The only potential liability for the inventors/university is whether the inventors failed to conduct due diligence - i.e., if they know the invention infringes a patent, they can't fraudulently license their claimed IP as non-infringing. But that's a contractual issue between the inventors and the licensee.)
I'd like to suggest a closer analogy. Have software patents impacted academic computer science research? I don't think it has, and I haven't seen anything to that effect. (If anything, it's increased such research, as CS academicians can now publish articles on the evil software patent system. ;) )
You came up with a whole theory of why it was actually beneficial - but without providing any evidence, not even the meager evidence you claim Fortune is using.
Sure, but the context is totally different. I'm not writing an article. I'm posting some off-handed comments in a web forum. When I write articles on this (or any other) topic, you can expect that they are supported by dozens of citations to federal government statistics.
His point was, that without the strong emphasis on commercialisation that is rampant today (and to which the amendment of the law contributed) universities were more inclined to do fundamental research, while now they are more and more inclined to do 'rapid-potential-profit' research.
I'm having trouble with this notion of "rapid potential profit," because very few technology licenses embody anything of the sort. Yes, the once-in-a-lifetime, "oh my god this is awesome" kind of invention involves a large up-front payment to the university. (That's what happened in the case of Emory - as described in TFA - which, yes, I did read. ;) To be fair, I'd read about Emory a few weeks ago.)
But most cases of university technology licensing involve much-delayed profit, in the form of a royalty stream from ongoing product sales. It usually takes a year or several to get the product on the shelf, and even then, the royalties start small and slowly build over time. There is nothing "rapid" about this.
The author of that comment had some notion that university researchers were being turned into product-development guys. Based on my experience, nothing like this is happening. The primary source of pressure on researchers is to get federal grant money - not to invent valuable IP.
Ofcourse, when you consider monetary income als THE goal of businesses and and universities alike, then this consideration may hold no value for you.
I don't view money as THE goal. I view money as the fuel for the process that achieves THE goal, which is to maximize technological progress. I want to see new, useful treatments for every known disease. My
Jesus. Seriously, are we even speaking the same language? Is your browser filtering everything I write through Babelfish's English/Cantonese filter and then back again before displaying it to you?
My original post argued none of the points you just indicated. Let me tackle each in turn:
(1) that Bayh-Dole did not lead to an increase in the patenting of research,
Wrong. I argued that the Bayh-Dole Act did not change the patent system in any way. That's why I wrote: "Before the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, universities could patent inventions; after the Act, universities can still patent inventions, in exactly the same manner (foregoing the completely unrelated changes in patent law.)"
If you'd asked me whether the Bayh-Dole Act had increased university patenting, I would have responded, Absolutely! It has certainly increased the number of patents held by my academic research center - we file over 100 applications/year, and this figure grows every year.
But here's what the Act didn't change: (1) how those patents are obtained through the USPTO, (2) what kinds of technologies can be patented, (3) the scope of enforceability of the ensuing patent, (4) the prosecution and litigation costs of the patent... etc...
My point, as I originally wrote it and as I write it now, is that the Bayh-Dole Act deals with who gets to commercialize te patent. That is, who owns the rights to the invention, including the rights to any ensuing patents, and what they can do with them. The Bayh-Dole Act only changed ownership rights to the technology, including rights the subsequent patents. This has certainly had an effect on patent activity, but the Act itself did not change anything about the actual patents or the process of obtaining or enforcing them.
My argument here hasn't changed one bit in the last 24 hours - as it shouldn't have, because I was right. Any perceived shifting is the product of your addled reading comprehension skills.
(2) it did not result in higher costs to consumers,
Wrong. Neither my original post nor any of my ensuing posts discussed whether prices have risen. I don't even think that question has meaning, because my argument has been that without the Bayh-Dole Act, they wouldn't have had a product to buy. It's impossible to argue a price differential between one scenario where the product is available, and one where it's not.
What my original post discussed was the philosophical component of that price - whether the patient has already paid for the drug by way of federal taxes. I don't believe that's true. I believe that federal grants are used to create the idea, and the consumer's payment is for the implementation of that idea as a drug. They are not "paying twice," philosophically.
Again, that was my original argument, and I have maintained it up to and including this post. As I noted, the assertion that you thought I was making is not only nowhere in my posts, but is nonsensical.
(3) it did not have a negative effect on research.
Wrong. Closer, but but still wrong. My original post did not discuss the impact of Bayh-Dole on research in any way. I did mention the impact of Bayh-Dole on pharmaceutical company productivity, which is completely different. And I did mention the effect of Bayh-Dole on academic research in subsequent posts. But again, you're incorrect in summarizing my original post this way.
And your first salvo of idiocy was arguing that the piece only had a single metric on which to back its generalizations about problems that the Bayh-Dole act created for research.
You keep making these ridiculous mistakes. It's really getting tiresome.
I did originally state that the article mentions only a single metric to
There's nothing ad hominem about what I wrote. You may not like it; that doesn't make it unfair. You have now demonstrated five very basic reading comprehension errors in your posts. I am merely pointing that out.
What you characterized as crappy was clearly a completely bogus claim that the article is based on one measure of research productivity.
Now you're just confusing yourself.
We've had two parallel but distinct arguments here:
- How the article supports its notion that U.S. academic research has slowed down due to the Bayh-Dole Act - which was supported by one metric that is, at best, very indirect.
- How the article supports its notion that pharmaceutical company productivity has not grown as a result of the Bayh-Dole Act - which it supported with a few barely-quantitative criteria ranging from poor to flat-out lies (as I demonstrated above.)
Frankly, if you don't think that the number of drugs shortlisted for "priority" testing by the FDA is a good metric for biomedical research you need to take some science courses.Now you're just not reading at all. My criticism wasn't about the correlation between FDA-approved drugs and biomedical research productivity. That's fine. My criticism was that the metric was offered as a comparison, to show the effect of the Bayh-Dole Act - yet the numbers compared were both well after the Act was passed. They show nothing about the impact of the Act, because they fail to indicate what things were like before the Act went into effect.
- David Stein
Let me refresh your memory for how we got here. I indicated that the article presented virtually no evidence to support its conclusion. You posted a snippet, indicating that that's where the evidence was. I shredded it. Now you want to just make a blanket hand-wave gesture toward the rest of the article and say, "It's somewhere in there."
It's not in there. Just like it wasn't in the excerpt you posted. Go ahead - prove me wrong.
Of course there are ways to critique the data, which makes it surprising that all of your critiques are responses to data in the snippets of article that I've posted.
That's because these are the only pieces of "evidence" in the entire article to support the notion that the Bayh-Dole Act is slowing down research. The rest is anecdote, supposition, dramatic quotes, and unrelated material. Again - I challenge you to prove me wrong.
71 drugs a year is not an improvement over 18 drugs a year if the remaining 53 don't do anything.
Incredible. Apparently, you can make a serious reading comprehension error even in a single sentence.
That sentence doesn't indicate that they "don't do anything." It indicates that they "did not show any survival benefit over the old, standard care." In other words:
1) They prolong life of cancer patients just as well as previously known therapies. That's a damn site better than "not doing anything."
2) Drugs have lots of properties - survival rate is not the sole feature of a cancer drug. They may have reduced side effects, like less hair loss or nausea. They may have fewer adverse drug interactions. They may be administered in a more convenient form, like a tablet instead of a horse pill.
Now you're 0/5 in terms of reading comprehension, having made five serious errors in four posts. Jesus, that's amazing. Zoloft, buddy - seriously.
- David Stein
Who mentioned anything about a patent "for" the federal government?
Out of three comments this evening, you are 0/4 for reading comprehension. That may be a Slashdot record. Seriously - Zoloft - it will do you some good.
- David Stein
What I characterized as "crappy" was the reference to the percentage of academic publications by America vs. the rest of the world, as an indication that U.S. research is slowing down because of the Bayh-Dole Act. I wasn't referring to "the number of drugs under testing for public release" or "drug-focused innovation" when I made that statement.
Seriously, your reading comprehension is just terrible. You should consider asking your doctor if you have ADHD before posting again. They make drugs for that, you know.
- David Stein
No, it's not.
You're not understanding how this works. Researchers could freely apply for patents before the Bayh-Dole Act, exactly as they could after the Bayh-Dole Act. In each era, the patents were prosecuted in almost exactly the same manner, and would eventually issue in the names of the researchers. Nothing here has changed about how "researchers get patents."
What changed, and what the snippet you posted mentions, relates to the rights conferred by the patent. The federal government used to own those rights, to the exclusion of the university, but the researchers could ask the government to give those rights back. Now the university initially owns them, subject to certain rights reserved to the government. Who owns the rights to the patent is a wholly different concept from how researchers "get" patents - which has not changed.
You seem to have this recurring problem of pasting text, and then drawing a summary of it that's completely wrong. You might want to mention this problem to your doctor - he might be able to prescribe something to help your reading comprehension.
- David Stein
It does? Really?
They probably do compete when two groups independently discover the same thing. But that's been true of science since the days of ancient Greece. Nothing about patents, pharmaceuticals, or the Bayh-Dole Act changed that aspect of science one whit.
Now consider the normal case, not involving a conflict over priority of a single invention. When a researcher and university find a potential drug target, they spend the following months and years talking to pharmaceutical companies about licensing. The struggle here is solely between the university and the pharmaceutical company to establish a fair license price. There is very little interaction or competition with other universities, which are licensing other drugs for other purposes. I'm not sure how that "competition" would even work.
Not really. Researchers still publish and present their results all the time. The only difference is that the university makes them tell their technology transfer office about it beforehand, and help them get a patent application on file. It's really a pretty minor effect.
Even where the researcher doesn't want to publish the results yet, they still get to share their data and materials with other institutions. It's done under a pretty standard contract, like a confidentiality or materials transfer areement, that explicitly prohibits the receiving institution from running off with the data. In fact, this is nothing new - it's just that instead of having unwritten rules of decorum about using each other's data, now the rules are written up in a contract.
Universities and researchers sue each other? Show me where they do that. Most IP lawsuits in this field are contract disputes between universities and their licensees, or patent disputes between pharmaceutical companies.
Academic institutions have been gradually acting more like corporations for the last 100 years. Has nothing to do with IP. Has everything to do with an increased emphasis on efficiency in academia.
And researchers don't act like corporations. They still act like researchers. They do everything that researchers did 30 years ago: spend time in the lab, write up grant applications, publish, travel to conferences. Their lives have not really changed.
- David Stein
I'm glad you agree. Hopefully you'll also agree that it really doesn't belong in any substantive discussion. If I missed something from the article, you can fairly cite what I missed in a counterargument; but accusing me of not having read the article adds nothing to the discussion, and really just adds a distracting confrontational edge.
Too bad it took a beating to get you to support some of your assertions.
I'm not actually here to make any assertions, since it's not my article. I'm here to discuss the amazingly weak assertions in the Fortune article. When I write my own article about the benefits of the Bayh-Dole Act, then you can ask for, and fairly expect, some data to back up my assertions.
What we do know though is that IP lawsuits have increased dramatically as a result of this enactment...
Frankly - so what? These lawsuits are just disputes between pharmaceutical companies, or between universities and pharmaceutical companies over licenses. How does the presence or absence of lawsuits affect the rate of technology development? You can't just imply a link here.
Where did you get that notion? The whole point of basic research is that it's not "immediately profitable," or even certain to be profitable in the long run. If it were, pharmaceutical companies would trip over themselves to do it in-house. The fact that we rely (hugely) on the federal government to fund it disproves your point.
And exactly how do you think you get to that stage? By just picking a random drug? No - there's research involved to get to that stage. Academics remove the biggest cost pharmaceuticals face - risk.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand how these inventions get made.
Usually, it goes like this:
In your previous post, you were trying to assert that drug testing, the third step, is performed by academicians under their federal grants. You were wrong. It is performed by academicians, but is wholly funded by the companies that own the drugs. In fact, the academicians host no "risk" whatsoever at this stage. They get paid whether or not the study works; they get to publish the results no matter what those results show; they bear no liability for the effects of the drug.
- David Stein
Look at that snippet. What does it involve?
- Metrics contrasting 1996 vs. 2003, which are pretty much useless for drawing conclusions about the consequences of the Bayh-Dole Act - which was passed in 1980 and took effect in 1981. In case you're really not following this, I'll spell it out for you: they might have instead compared the period before the Bayh-Dole Act took effect vs. the period after the Bayh-Dole Act took effect. That would have been a little more insightful.
- Some unrelated metrics about the death rates for diabetics in 1977 vs. today. Last I checked, diabetes was not the kind of disease that we control with drugs, but with supplements of the natural hormone called "insulin." Weight loss and diet are also crucial factors, and coincidentally, both weight and diet have gotten much worse in America over the past 25 years. My point is that death rates for diabetics have little or nothing to do with the productivity (or any facet) of the pharmaceutical industry.
- A spurious quote about patients with neurological conditions anxiously awaiting new drugs. This is where Fortune really loses its grip on reality. Consider:
- Alzheimer's: link - "For some people in the early and middle stages of the disease, the drugs tacrine (Cognex), donepezil (Aricept), rivastigmine (Exelon), or galantamine (Razadyne, previously known as Reminyl) may help prevent some symptoms from becoming worse for a limited time. Another drug, memantine (Namenda), has been approved to treat moderate to severe AD, although it also is limited in its effects."
- Parkinson's: link - here is a list of 16 drugs that are useful for treating Parkinson's. Many of these are pretty recent, if my memory is correct.
- Multiple sclerosis: link - five new drugs are on the market for treating MS. In fact, these drugs are amazing - a weekly injection of Avonex essentially halts and reverses the progression of MS. I have personally witnessed this with a family member.
- A factoid about the efficacy of new cancer drugs. This doesn't change the fact that we have 71 new cancer drugs on the market since 1990, which, in fact, seems like quite a brisk pace of inventing new drugs. More importantly, the factoid suggests that 53 of the drugs don't have improved survival benefits - might they have other benefits, like reduced side effects, easier administration, etc.? (If not, then why is the FDA approving them?
So I stand by my earlier statement that Fortune's "data" is paper-thin and provides precious little support for its conclusion. If you'd actually read the excerpt with an ounce of objectivity before pasting it here, you'd have seen that yourself.In other words, we have great new drugs for all three conditions. The fact that Fortune tried to bolster its argument with a comment that is so demonstrably false is indicative of its overall sloppiness.
- David Stein
I have no idea what that means. Does he think that, at one point, researchers were automatically granted patents upon application? Or that, either before or after, they were not permitted to file for patents for federally-funded research? Or that the federal government "automatically" filed patent applications on their behalf?
None of these interpretations make any sense. Nothing about patents is "automatic" that was non-"automatic" before, nor vice versa. I honestly can't tell what he meant by this. That's why I asked him to clarify, which is when you stepped in.
And your much smaller leap to substantiate your theory is..what, exactly?
I don't have to prove my theory to anyone. I didn't write an article of any kind (though I may in the near future - in a slightly more academic journal than Fortune - as this is a topic of great interest to me.) I'm mainly here to criticize the presumptive conclusions from the article, and from the Slashdot crowd.
Are you suggesting their conclusions or claims in these matters are untrue, or merely inadequately referenced with sources?
Yes. I'm suggesting that they have been somewhat sloppy and cursory in the factual backing for the conclusions they have drawn. This is Fortune Magazine - it's like a version of Teen Magazine for the Chief (.*) Officer crowd: very fluffy, mostly op-ed, no real analysis or hard data. That's its reputation, and it has earned it well.
Hardly. Elsewhere in this thread, I (and others) posted data about the percentage of Americans with health insurance, and cited the U.S. Census. I also cited the growing trend in federal funding of research, which I pulled from the NIH website. There are certainly reliable sources out there - Fortune just chose not to cite any, any at all, for the few scraps of data that form the keystone of its argument.
I doubt you would be more happy if they had said a '20% decline', for instance...
At least that's a step toward verifiable. "Worse" is so... qualitative.
Ermm... you are unable to get your capitalistic-orientated mind of anything but money, are you?
Back up the train of thought a second. As a counter to my complaint about Fortune's lack of data, you referenced their citation on university research. That citation of theirs took the form of money (and patents.) Though I approve of it as a metric, it wasn't my choice to use money here - it was Fortune's.
A cursory scroll through the posts would make it clear to you that sentence was not from me, but from the parent poster.
Yeah, but you chose to castigate me over not adopting the literal meaning of the original poster, from which you apparently derived some kind of meaning. My point is that it has no cognizable literal meaning - it's jibberish. "Research" doesn't "flow" anywhere.
The only one who is completely focused and sees it as the crux of the debate, is you.
Not really. When I advocate for the patent system, and for the licensing method for drugs, I'm doing so for the sake of innovation. I don't care about the money; I want to see the U.S. push technology forward as fast as possible. The cash flow is an enabling means to that end.
In reality, he, as well as I, are talking about what the a
What is the "hard evidence?" The fact that Fortune wrote that it's true, and that you want to believe them? I'm guessing you're a fan of Fox News.
"Hard evidence" involves facts and data, not buzz-clips and cursory conclusions. Point to some realistic data that shows that "innovative drug creation" is dropping. If you go back and review the Fortune article, you'll find very little in the way of data. It's just not that kind of magazine.
- David Stein