Comments on: Link roundup

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 23:00:48 +0000

Steve Reuland: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, our knowledge of the mechanisms apoptosis and angiogenesis come entirely from academic labs, yet these are some of the most popular targets for new cancer drugs.” Sebastian Holsclaw: You say ‘targets’ not ‘marketed drugs’. Which is kind of the whole point. Sebastian, I don’t get the importance of this distinction. The original issue runs like this: Should the well-off minority be exempt from paying taxes that support cancer research, which they benefit from? It was then questioned whether our taxes do support cancer research. Well, if our taxes support reserach that lays out the processes that cancer drugs must target, and private enterprise produces those drugs, then aren’t people who use those drugs benefiting from tax-funded cancer research? The issue is whether taxes are necessary for the development of the drugs, not whether they’re sufficient. And as I understand it, identifying the targets isn’t just saying “Hey! It would be great if we had a cancer drug!”; it’s actually mapping the processes that the drugs act on.

By: JamesW

JamesW — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 10:06:16 +0000

Historical analogies for exempting the propertied classes from tax: – Louis XIV and the French nobility. Made political sense at the time as compensation for political emasculation of the class after the Fronde and relegation to a life of cultured idleness, but a big contributor to France’s defeat by Britain for imperial primacy, and of the French Revolution; Britain was a corrupt landed oligarchy that nevertheless taxed itself. – Mediaeval exemption of the Church and monasteries: justified originally by a general belief that prayer by holy men bought others time off purgatory, but self-defeating as wealth extinguished holiness in short order; long-term result: the Reformation. I can’t see any comparable shreds of justification for the Republican drive to exempt capital from tax entirely, it’s just a grab. Did pre-1917 Russian landowners pay tax?

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 07:05:23 +0000

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, our knowledge of the mechanisms apoptosis and angiogenesis come entirely from academic labs, yet these are some of the most popular targets for new cancer drugs.” You say ‘targets’ not ‘marketed drugs’. Which is kind of the whole point.

By: Steve Reuland

Steve Reuland — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 03:16:37 +0000

Baa is correct. It’s only been in the past few months that I’ve heard this line about drug companies ripping off NIH. I can tell you, as someone who works for a drug company, that this statement causes nothing but incredulous looks and outright laughter among those who actually discover and develop drugs.
Suggesting a possible target is not the same as making a drug for it. There are many years of work (and many hundreds of millions of dollars) in between those two. NIH-funded research is very interesting and very important. But so is ours.
I think the point is that the government, using tax dollars, has an indispensible role in cancer research. As one of those academic researchers, I certainly wouldn’t downplay the role of drug companies in drug development. But it remains that their work rests on a pedestal of basic research that the NIH funds, and most of that consists of identifying particular targets that drug companies can develop inhibitors against in the first place. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, our knowledge of the mechanisms apoptosis and angiogenesis come entirely from academic labs, yet these are some of the most popular targets for new cancer drugs.
So I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say that if public involvement in cancer research were to be slashed, then the pharmaceutical industry would be extremely hard hit. Either their own research would suffer greatly, or they would have to sink billions of their own money into basic research, with all the free-rider and/or duplicate efforts that would imply.
So if we all agree on the importance of the public sector in funding basic cancer research, then the question of who pays for it (wage earners vs. people who live off of unearned income) is relevant as a matter of morality.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 02:58:23 +0000

Netscape grew out of Mosaic. Mosaic was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlaign. This is one of a handful of supercomputer centers in the U.S. They get federal funding. And the Internet itself was developed by federal funding. The idea back in 1968 was to have a network that would survive nuclear war.

By: baa

baa — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 02:49:55 +0000

D’oh! Derek, you should come work for a small biotech. We give everything to patients. Those looking for a locus classicus for the ‘NIH does the heavy lifting’ argument, should take a look at the work of Merrill Goozner. I say a bit of his most recent CPSAN talk, the point of which I might mean-spiritedly summarize as “med chem is easy, target validation is hard.” (and all the target validation is done on the NIH dime, naturally).

By: Derek Lowe

Derek Lowe — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 02:29:25 +0000

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 00:35:08 +0000

Robin: also a good point :)

By: baa

baa — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 22:52:13 +0000

sven, Sorry to attribute the wrong position to you! If the proposition were instead that the majority of cancer drug development is paid for by patent royalties, would you be similarly suspicious? The idea that government provides “proof of principle” for drug development (or medical device development) is currently a common trope in American policy discourse, and it seems to me misinformed. I would concur that NIH funding plays an substantial role in health research, considered broadly. Robin Green: Nice to know about Chomsky, thanks. However, I bet you’d find the “one drop” arguement for government research responsibility advanced far more commonly (and in more mainstream venues)against pharmaceuticals than against high tech/software.

By: Giles

Giles — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 22:35:57 +0000

“Sebastian, corporation tax is a cost of doing business. It’s not something which investors would directly pay for out of their own earnings” Yes, and income is a cost of going to work – its not something poor children pay directly out of their breadwinners earnings. Capital is taxed twice and is taxed more heavily in the US than many other developed countries. With population aging its also a mistake to think that capital income accrues mainly to the rich.

By: Sven

Sven — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 22:24:57 +0000

I wasn’t trying to make a case about “parasitism of drug companies.” I’m simply questioning the specific claim that “America’s cancer research is paid for (mostly) by patent royalties on drugs” and the broader implication that public financing plays only a minor role in health research.

By: Robin Green

Robin Green — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 22:24:32 +0000

We do lying a little differently over here in the UK. Ocassionally when a minister or prime minister tells a real whopper or few, the government announces an “independent” inquiry, and then emerges from it announcing full vindication, or at any rate “no-one is to blame”. Works every time. More usually a lie is “re-clarified” (i.e. adjusted) once, twice… or as many times as necessary until the media simply get bored of the issue. Hmm, maybe it’s not so different after all.

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 22:22:59 +0000

Matt Weiner: Yeah, point taken with respect to Frist. It’s an example of a particularly egregious and outrageous lie in the service of populism though. It’d be like describing the boss of Walmart as a local shopkeeper or the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a footsoldier…

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 22:08:13 +0000

From this side of the Atlantic the political situation in the USA, amply illustrated by the comments by Hastert and Frist above, just seems to have parted company with anything even remotely approaching a sane, rational perspective on the world. From this side of the Atlantic, it looks like this is wrong: The comments by Frist are garden-variety faux-populism. And the comments by Hastert are an indication that the political situation in the USA has parted company with anything even remotely approaching a sane, rational perspective on the world, but it didn’t just happen.

By: Robin Green

Robin Green — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 21:36:57 +0000

Sebastian, corporation tax is a cost of doing business. It’s not something which investors would directly pay for out of their own earnings. Do we then believe that the innovations the internet companies (Yahoo/Netscape/Amazon) were provided by the government. Well, in some sense, yes, I suppose so. But no one ever uses this as evidene for the parasitism of tech companies. Actually, Noam Chomsky has implied that, IIRC.