Not too long ago, Steve Koonin (the provost of Caltech) went to work for BP as their chief scientist, and he made a very serious effort to encourage long-term investment in biofuels technology. He remarked that the reaction of his superiors was that BP did not invest in anything without some potential for payoff within 5 years ("BP is not a charity" was the memorable phrase I remember), and what ended up coming out of these efforts was a private-public partnership with Berkeley, LBNL and UIUC. This is the prime example I'm thinking of when I say that the private sector is great at pushing things in the short term, but that there is a need for public institutions to drive the long-term research.
If this is your evidence I have already won the discussion. Im supposed to believe that the decission of one corporation regulated by the government and that pays taxes is a clear indicative of your point? Your point is already defeated, but if you wish I can point to you a lot of decission where the government did not look at the long term. Would that be prove to you that the government is incapable of looking long term? See how what you said is irrelevant?
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A $30B+ NIH budget, bigger than the combined health research budgets of the members of the EU, and a pharma industry that's cutting jobs because it has too few new inventions in the pipeline?
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/14/eli-lilly-to-cut-5-500-jobs-as-big-pharma-winter-approaches/
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/14/eli-lilly-to-cut-5-500-jobs-as-big-pharma-winter-approaches/
Let me point you again that I was giving a historical perspective and that I already said that the present situation has changed. But in the example you are giving: During this crisis, the company cutting off in long term research to dedicate more resources to the short term needs that the costumers might have? How evil...
We should let the costumers out of what they need now in the name of the long term...Quote
The research part you're thinking of is in no small part supported by the NIH. Pharma spends big to implement existing ideas on a huge scale (say, screening 1,000,000 compounds against 1,000,000 targets to see if you get a hit), but many of the foundational ideas (say, discovering oncogenes as potential targets for drugs) come from basic research. Moreover, if you're comparing total expenditures on healthcare, that's a very different beast (pick your poison: trial lawyers suing for malpractice or insurance companies/hospitals/HMOs spending 20-30% on administrative overhead).
Again, I already pointed out that the government is involved in the USA healthcare research industry, but the fact that with more private sector there is more innovation is an indication that the private sector can invest long term (and better than the government does) if the resources are not taken away.
And yet health indicators of the USA are much worse? Europe is excellent at taking advantage of the research that comes out of the US and actually delivering it.
Yes, Europe is leeching off the USA and also the USA has been damaging its healthcare industry and making it more expensive with growing government regulations all over the XX century. And btw, I suffer european government health care so dont tell me about it.
But you are talking about something not directly related with the discussion to supposedly score a cheap point. Is this how you want to keep the discussion. Pointing anecdotes and arguing about things that dont directly relate?
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As one of the posters replied, this is very speculative.
Yes. Its very speculative. Its as speculative as you saying that if the money is left to the private sector it would not investigate long term. Its a social science and we can do no better. Again, what Im trying to say is that all the things you are saying are anecdotal evidences of a situation where the government takes the money away from the private sector by force, so the government has the resources to investigate while the private sector does not. By pointing the developments of the government or the actions of some private actors (heavily regulated and subsidized by the government private actors) in this situation you are proving nothing.
A more fair analisys would be to compare similar (as much as posible) countries in the same time period with similar technology, one with heavy government involvement and the other without. That would be some valid evidence (not prove, but valid evidence).
And please, if you have to answer to something, answer to this part.
The rest is really not related to the discussion but I ll answer anyways in the next comment.