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 Sunday, October 27, 2002
Genetic science tests our wisdom. Boston Globe Oct 26 2002 2:07PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]
An interesting article that attempts to examine the importance of the recently published genomic sequences of the mosquitoe and the malaria parasite, Plasmodium. I makes a few excellent points, although I think that the last few paragraphs postulate a truly fictional world. The best insurance that this new power will be used wisely is a citizenry solidly educated in both the sciences and the arts. The decisions to be made are highly technical, and must be based on scientific knowledge. They are far too important to be left to scientists. How do we get to this utopian world? Today, we see many of these decisions based on emotional arguments. I would say that, at the moment, as many decisions are left to the artists as to the scientists. The last link ticks me off. The decisions arfe far too important to only examine with one world view, yet so many of the discussions are extremely polarized, with little attempt at compromise. How will we get there? 8:55:16 AM 
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Too much MSG could cause blindness. New Scientist Oct 26 2002 11:29AM ET [Moreover - moreover...]
Of course, this is in rats who were given MSG. 20% of their diet was MSG. I wonder what the control was. There is lots of speculation in this article with little real numbers. Lots of 'perhaps', 'maybes', etc. This sort of work is really just the start and will require a lot of followup work. 8:40:33 AM
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Stephen Maurer, Promoting and Disseminating Knowle .... Stephen Maurer, Promoting and Disseminating Knowledge: The Public/Private Interface and its appendices A, B, and C. This is the background paper for participants in the Symposium on the Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Infdormation in the Public Domain (Washington, September 5-6). Excerpt: "Much of the current debate over the public domain reduces the analysis to slogans like 'no one should own the human genome' or 'academic scientists should work with, but not for, companies.' This Paper takes a more systematic approach. It starts from the proposition that contracts should be designed to (a) promote the discovery of new facts, and (b) encourage people to use existing research results. It then asks when academic/industry transactions that restrict the 'public domain' are likely to compromise those goals." [FOS News]
Dissemination of knowledge is one of the important problems in today's world. Some people want to restrict this so they can make more money. Others want it to be unfettered to have the greatest impact. I am confidant that we will solve the problem. I just hope it is sooner rather than later. 8:18:37 AM
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Will Work For Humanity.
Who Owns Ideas? The War Over Global Intellectual Property. Good discussion of the arguments over copyright that I link to even though I disagree with it (I'm so noble). This is in general a very well written discussion. But the opinion expressed in the article turns on the same old tired argument: "Preventing the distribution of copycat drugs because of adherence to patent laws invariably means that some desperately ill patients will not have access to medicines they need. Yet the act of ignoring patents in the name of helping sick people curbs the incentive to develop new, lifesaving drugs in the future." That's so not true. Some people would work for the good of humanity. Others would work for government research labs, set up for the good of humanity (at least a part of my work is of the former variety, part of the latter variety). The assumption is that people won't conduct research unless they can hold the rest of society at ransom for it. It's just not true, we know it's not true, and yet this argument continues to circulate. By David S. Evans, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002 [OLDaily] [Seb's Open Research]
While I strongly agree that people will do the research for the good of humanity (after all I was one of them), research is a small part of the overall problem. It is a huge capital expense to get a drug out of the lab and into people (i.e. 10-15 years and 100s of millions of dollars). If government was to take on this expense, there would be a lot less money available for research. Someone has to pay for this and I am a little leery of the thought that the decision to move forward with a product might become dependent on how tax revenues are going. The government can support research as well as the private sector but I am not sure they could as effeciently get a useful therapeutic out of it. At the moment, the profit motive seems to be the only approach that can get something out of the lab. Even then it does not work well all the time. The profit motive makes it very hard to produce drugs that are less than $1 billion dollar markets. It would be much better to create ways to move products through without the huge expense it is now. If you have to spend $500,000,000 to get a drug approved, and 1 in 10 drugs you work on get approved (a very high ratio not usually seen in reality), you are only going to target blockbuster drugs. Reduce this cost and you will see a lot more cheap drugs out there. 8:09:49 AM
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CNet News.com is running my column, "Tech's big challenge: Decentralization" today. It's an overview of why I think decentralization is the key technology issue of the next 10-20 years, and some of the themes we'll explore at Supernova. I welcome your comments. [Werblog]
If I can clear some things off my calendar, I plan on going to Supernova. Sounds like a very interesting meeting. There are a lot of these technologies that will be important in biotech but have not been widely accepted yet. 7:51:47 AM
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I've got my laptop set up and using the Airport network so my mother can read her email and I can use Radio. Very nice. 7:49:24 AM
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MS and the Mouse. New York Times: "Microsoft is not a media company," said Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, at the event. "We use channels with content that partners create managed by software that Microsoft creates."
This quote, in an article about Disney's new partnership with Microsoft to offer a customized version of the MSN online service, is worth reading twice. Especially the last sentence. Microsoft is, in effect, saying that it's not a media company, it's a cable TV company. And this after AOL recently concluded that it's not an online service, it's a premium cable channel. Innnnnteresting! More on this later. [Werblog]
Why would anyone WANT to be a cable company? I guess becasue by controlling the pipes they control everything and can get a cut of any fees. Not my idea of the future byt I am sure it is MS's. 7:45:54 AM
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My parents and brother are in town so I do not know how much I will post the next few days. 7:37:26 AM
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