WTF?!?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?! I don't like this news one bit! Nothing good can come out of this. Our government is getting involved in GENETIC RESEARCH! "Years of effort and tens of billions of dollars in financing by drug makers in gene-related research has largely been a bust." and "The industry estimates it invested $45.8 billion in research in 2009." Our government wants to invest a BILLION or more in this project that has ALREADY PROVEN TO BE A FAILED INVESTMENT? So our government is going to be using our taxpayer money for this research and development and the pharmaceutical companies are going to benefit largely as a result. Do I have this right? Isn't this what clearly defines CRONIE CAPITALISM! This is yet another MORAL HAZARD and another taxpayer MONEY PIT!
Oh and what about the BILLIONS of dollars contributed to private charities that goes towards research and development to find cures for every disease under the sun and other discoveries! My gosh the pharmceutical companies already make tremendous profits peddling their legal drugs on the American public. Pay attention to the constant drug commercials and listen carefully to the side effects. They're worse then the illness your wanting to cure. The FDA allows them to use the public as guinea pigs until someone dies or has debilitating adverse side effects and the drug is pulled from the market. It's not the government's (taxpayers) responsibility to step in and compensate for the money they are losing on legal fees defending themselves against class action lawsuits. What our government is doing with this new drug center is bogus! I feel like Dr. Frankenstein is getting free reign to play (g)od with our money on the pharmaceutical companies behalf. What's worse, this new drug center for GENETIC RESEARCH is connected to the Federal Health and Human Services department!
I implore the republican party to stop this new center from being built. Didn't President Obama just state yesterday that "Our government needs to live within its means." Was that just more hot air he was blowing in our ear. By the looks of things already coming to light, I'd have to say so.
Oh and what about the BILLIONS of dollars contributed to private charities that goes towards research and development to find cures for every disease under the sun and other discoveries! My gosh the pharmceutical companies already make tremendous profits peddling their legal drugs on the American public. Pay attention to the constant drug commercials and listen carefully to the side effects. They're worse then the illness your wanting to cure. The FDA allows them to use the public as guinea pigs until someone dies or has debilitating adverse side effects and the drug is pulled from the market. It's not the government's (taxpayers) responsibility to step in and compensate for the money they are losing on legal fees defending themselves against class action lawsuits. What our government is doing with this new drug center is bogus! I feel like Dr. Frankenstein is getting free reign to play (g)od with our money on the pharmaceutical companies behalf. What's worse, this new drug center for GENETIC RESEARCH is connected to the Federal Health and Human Services department!
I implore the republican party to stop this new center from being built. Didn't President Obama just state yesterday that "Our government needs to live within its means." Was that just more hot air he was blowing in our ear. By the looks of things already coming to light, I'd have to say so.
**************************************************************
The New York Times
written by Gardiner Harris
January 22, 2011
The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.
The new effort comes as many large drug makers, unable to find enough new drugs, are paring back research. Promising discoveries in illnesses like depression and Parkinson’s that once would have led to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort. [This whole paragraph is BS!]
The initial financing of the government’s new drug center is relatively small compared with the $45.8 billion that the industry estimates it invested in research in 2009. The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates, and drug companies have typically spent twice as much on marketing as on research, a business model that is increasingly suspect.
The National Institutes of Health has traditionally focused on basic research, such as describing the structure of proteins, leaving industry to create drugs using those compounds. But the drug industry’s research productivity has been declining for 15 years, “and it certainly doesn’t show any signs of turning upward,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the institutes.
The job of the new center, to be called the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, is akin to that of a home seller who spruces up properties to attract buyers in a down market. In this case the center will do as much research as it needs to do so that it can attract drug company investment.
That means that in some cases, the center will use one of the institutes’ four new robotic screeners to find chemicals that affect enzymes and might lead to the development of a drug or a cure. In other cases, the center may need to not only discover the right chemicals but also perform animal tests to ensure that they are safe and even start human trials to see if they work. All of that has traditionally been done by drug companies, not the government.
“None of this is intended to be competitive with the private sector,” Dr. Collins said. “The hope would be that any project that reaches the point of commercial appeal would be moved out of the academic support line and into the private sector.”
Whether the government can succeed where private industry has failed is uncertain, officials acknowledge, but they say doing nothing is not an option. The health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, sent a letter to Congress on Jan. 14 outlining the plan to open the new drug center by October — an unusually rapid turnaround for an idea first released with little fanfare in December.
Creating the center is a signature effort of Dr. Collins, who once directed the agency’s Human Genome Project. Dr. Collins has been predicting for years that gene sequencing will lead to a vast array of new treatments, but years of effort and tens of billions of dollars in financing by drug makers in gene-related research has largely been a bust.
As a result, industry has become far less willing to follow the latest genetic advances with expensive clinical trials. Rather than wait longer, Dr. Collins has decided that the government can start the work itself.
“I am a little frustrated to see how many of the discoveries that do look as though they have therapeutic implications are waiting for the pharmaceutical industry to follow through with them,” he said.
Dr. Collins’s ability to conceive and create such a center in a few short months would have been impossible for most of his predecessors, who had nice offices but little power. But Congress in recent years has invested real budgetary and administrative authority in the director’s office, and Dr. Collins is the first to fully use these new powers.
Under the plan, more than $700 million in research projects already under way at various institutes and centers would be brought together at the new center. But officials hope that the prospect of finding new drugs will lure Congress into increasing the center’s financing well beyond $1 billion.
Hopes of new money may be optimistic. Republicans in the House have promised to cut the kind of discretionary domestic spending that supports the health institutes, and officials are already bracing for significant cuts this year. But Dr. Collins has hinted that he is willing to cannibalize other parts of the health institutes to bring more resources to the new center.
Please click HERE to read the entire article...
No comments:
Post a Comment