[LindaH]

We need more researchers like this one!

From the Toronto Star, April 4, 2009

"Secrecy slowing drug research

Leading scientist urges transparency to deliver drugs to patients sooner

April 04, 2009
by Megan Ogilvie
HEALTH REPORTER

Excerpt:
"It takes a big brain and a big-time swagger to transform the drug industry. And Aled Edwards – a renowned University of Toronto biochemist and respected laboratory leader – employs both to change the way drugs get into your medicine cabinet.

The 47-year-old researcher says the current method of creating drugs – one shrouded in secrecy and driven by patents and money-making – has failed. Too few medicines have come to market in the past 30 years, which means too many people still get sick and die from disease.

Edwards believes the only way to get more medicines to patients is for industry and academia to work together – and to post all their findings free on the Internet..."

Full article at: http://www.thestar.com/article/613662

[Stitcher]

But how does the current system change?? Anything run on money and ego is not easy to change. The "me first" attitude is also a problem in the current system.

Can the attitude of "word together" and he believes in truly happen?

Carolyn

p.s. Okay Perry, now I have gotten you going...I bet!

[girija]

Thanks for posting this. Here you have two more researchers who believe in this philosophy. My husband and I feel the same way as Dr. Edwards does and I suspect that there are many more with similar views, but quietly working away in their labs. I know friends who refused to patent their findings and left the info for public access. However, my friends or my husband or I love to spend our time in labs at Institutes away from real life and assume that there are others who would change the system. WE have no clue who the others are!!
Good to hear that "Others" are starting to show up! As for me "PD" has changed my life and brought me out of the lab into real life..........May be I should get in touch with Dr.Edwards to find out how a no-name but sincere researcher can help his mission

Girija

Originally Posted by LindaH

We need more researchers like this one!

From the Toronto Star, April 4, 2009

"Secrecy slowing drug research

Leading scientist urges transparency to deliver drugs to patients sooner

April 04, 2009
by Megan Ogilvie
HEALTH REPORTER

Excerpt:
"It takes a big brain and a big-time swagger to transform the drug industry. And Aled Edwards – a renowned University of Toronto biochemist and respected laboratory leader – employs both to change the way drugs get into your medicine cabinet.

The 47-year-old researcher says the current method of creating drugs – one shrouded in secrecy and driven by patents and money-making – has failed. Too few medicines have come to market in the past 30 years, which means too many people still get sick and die from disease.

Edwards believes the only way to get more medicines to patients is for industry and academia to work together – and to post all their findings free on the Internet..."

Full article at: http://www.thestar.com/article/613662

[LindaH]

Girija
I'll bet Edwards would love to hear from you!

[Perryc]

Originally Posted by Stitcher

But how does the current system change?? Anything run on money and ego is not easy to change. The "me first" attitude is also a problem in the current system.

Can the attitude of "word together" and he believes in truly happen?

Carolyn

p.s. Okay Perry, now I have gotten you going...I bet!

Thanks Carolyn. I had worked on a response earlier but your challenge has shaken my opinion loose. I share your cynicism about how the system really works.

In general my view is that capitalism, which works on the "greed" model of motivation and the law of supply and demand as a control on the greed with an "invisible hand" is closer to the truth on the motivation of people but is way off in its assumptions of perfect information and numerous buyers and sellers to set prices that clear the markets. When the assumptions are met, such as in commodities and equity shares in businesses, the market economies are highly efficient, but too often the imformation is lacking (no transparency) or there are few buyers and or sellers. As Kenneth Boulding (a British economist) said in a lecture that I attended may years ago, "Laisse faire, is pretty lazy, but not very fair."

But, no matter how flawed the capitalist model is at fair distribution of benefits gained from the organizational advantages and technological leverage of industry, it is still way better than the alternative of social value as a motivator for efficient deployment of assets. Instead of trying to fundamentally change the capitalist, industrial model for therapy development, we should try to balance the excesses with counter balancing forces, such as regulatory agencies and also through empowerment of PWP to have greater voices in the scientific, regulatory, and even business decisions. This will provide greater transparency in the pre approval design decisions, when our input can make a difference to the outcomes of studies.

I am working on a paper on the subject of business models and their impact on the PD pipeline that goes into more detail.

Perry

[girija]

Hi all,

"But how does the current system change?? Anything run on money and ego is not easy to change. The "me first" attitude is also a problem in the current system.

Can the attitude of "word together" and he believes in truly happen?

Carolyn""

I have been thinking about Linda's post and carolyn's questions a lot, obviously have no answers, more questions for sure and a few examples of rays of hope. All these thoughts, its 2am, cannot sleep, so let me change this world........... Pl bear with me!! no havenot contacted Dr. Edwards yet.

An ideal and dream come to true scene from a scientist and a patient's point of view is what Edwards talks about. We are nowhere close to it, but I think there is hope. While I agree with Perry's analysis of capitalism, I am not sure ">........it is still way better than the alternative of social value as a motivator........" that social value is not a viable option.

How can we change the system? The system is ready to be changed, people of this forum are changing the system, people who got disgusted with CEOs getting huge bonuses aare changing the system.......
If we look around the world, there are NGOs working with no expectations of money......I can not give any statistics offhand but I see dedicated peoople working with AIDS patients, I know of a pharma in India prducing AZT or equivalent of it for a fraction of cost of what US pharma sells for,
Another example of a unique business that benefits the people is OneWorld health ib bay area that focuses on diseases none care about.

all these non-capitalistic models are surviving or thriving because of a small groups of people who deeply care and value life. Their success will indicate that money and ego boost are not the only rewards that work. Social values are their motivators...........

these are my thoughts at 3am! may be I am dreaming of a world free of Not even sure if this type of ramblings belong here! good night! I am posting it anyway!

girija

[girija]

Just waanted to share a poem by Tagore one of my favorites

Mind Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up

into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason

has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

[LindaH]

It wasn't always like this (drug development)

When Jonas Salk was asked by Edward R. Murrow about who owns the patent on his newly discovered polio vaccine, Salk replied, " Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? "

(CBS Television interview, on See It Now (12 April 1955) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk

Have to hope there are still some like-minded people around today working on drug develoopment. We know at least one -- thank you Girjia

[aftermathman]

has been running for years in the IT industry, see :

http://www.opensource.org/

It has proved very successful in countering the dominance of a single player, Microsoft, and offered alternatives such as Linux as an operating system and Java as a development language.

In the case of IT though this open system initiative happened for two main reasons:

i) Demand by customers afraid of "single vendor tie in".
ii) Commercially, a defense measure by large companies, (e.g. Sun and IBM), who assumed, rightly, that they were better off fighting Microsoft together rather than individually.

In the bio world we certainly have point (i), demand by customers/patients, we don't have point (ii) though, as far as I can see.

Through open source the participants gain all the advantages we are looking for, access to a larger development community, speed to market and choice, what a great situation this would be if extended to bio.

On the other hand, commercially there are no parallels to IT. There is no 400 pound gorilla ruling the jungle (Microsoft) that may threaten other companies and hence no reason for a company to share its hard earnt knowledge with other rivals. Indeed often the entire value of a company (e.g. Neurologix) is derived from its IPR in a certain field. If it gave away its IPR, it is no longer viable as a company.

I do not believe open source will work for bio, I do believe there should be greater input from collaborative governments ensuring promising developments/companies are adequately funded, making the company "state owned" if necessary. This collaborative government body should facilitate communication where appropriate, a job that seems to fall to charities such as MJFF at present.

Discretionary open source is not an option imho, co-ordinated government initiative is my favourite.

But neither will happen anyway, but it is good to sort out the problems of the world on the internet

Take care,
Neil.