He may mean 5 yrs till clinical trials. I think the part these researchers tend to leave out, is that once clinical trials begin, it's many more years till the treatment gets on the market and most don't make it.

Andy Grove is trying to say that by rebalancing the funding from NIH, to give ENOUGH funding through new types of grants to research a treatment all the way through clinical trials, and if they don't meet their endpoints, don't renew the grant. This is taking into consideration that they are not throwing away drugs as "failures" before truly analyzing that failure and that failures be redefined. Failures tell you what you should try next with the same drug. And if you have the funding, you can do this.

Who sets the baselines for improvent? Who sets the percentages of improvement required? Learn from the failure and keep going. The way they do it now, they fund tons of basic research that never gets any further. They throw away drugs that they perceive won't make money. Or they just don't have the money to continue. A massive waste.

Andy Grove's talk is one of the most important talks I"ve ever read. It makes sense, but people have to help him champion it. That's us.

paula