Medical Research: Gov't (NIH) vs Private (Big Pharma)
This was a great blog post by a conservative, pro-free-market individual who worked in the NIH, likes Pharma, but nonetheless argues that government sponsored medical research is really at the core of most basic research and discoveries for new diseases
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As you know my current direct employer is the NIH. I have worked in pharma before, and my current project is designing disease models for drug screening.
I think both of the bloggers are wrong, and show a clear bias towards their desired outcome.
1) The primary job of pharma is to pass drugs through the nightmare that is the FDA. They probably employ more lawyers and lobbyist than scientists.
2) NIH and NSF are some of the best models for why the free market (as opposed to a .gov mandate) is the primary vehicle for innovation. You see the NIH is funded by the .gov, but it is not run by the .gov appointees. It is run by scientists, in a largely unbiased and merit based fashion. It is incredibly competitive, and very selective, about issuing funds. The NIH accountability is excellent. It is in my opinion one of the best scientific organizations in the world.
That leads me to a point. A publicly funded project (or health care) for that matter is not necessary bad, if it is run based on free market principles of merit and competition. It is the .gov mandated unaccountable beurocracies that are bad. Another note is that the NIH is not the only source of funding for academia. There are numerous private foundations and funds that are based on the same merit based peer reviewed system that find top notch research.
So we have a conflict. We have two organizations that are federal in origin and tax funded the NIH and the FDA. One (NIH) is run via free market principle, the other is an accountable monopoly (FDA). One the NIH is a source of great innovation the other FDA is one of the reasons our health care cost are out of control. It would seem to me that the sane thing to do would be to advocate the reform of FDA (and other .gov agencies) to be more like NIH.
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If this would be impossible, abolish it.
2. I agree about NIH and NSF--they basically are run on models of committees of experts that help direct resources in exactly the competitive manner you describe. Thus, they allow the efficiences of private industry to work towards a common good by helping them achieve goals that, by themselves, the market would never push them to achieve.
Together--it would be like getting back an earlier age of liberal government--one that worked during WW2 for the most part.
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