They Needed a Million Dollar Meeting to Figure This Out?

Another result of the Peter Singer/Toronto study on dispersion of technology in the developing world - and on the developing world's ability to innovate - is this big meeting in London to advance the novel point that big technology companies might not be putting much resource into advancing the developing world. They contrasted some companies with others (Apple turned its website into a billboard for Tsunami aid, while Microsoft had nothing on its site), but the big point was familiar: "Only 16 of the 1,393 new drugs marketed between 1975 and 1999 by western companies were for tropical and developing country diseases. The west accounts for 97 per cent of the biotechnology sector's $47bn (€36bn, £25bn) of annual revenues."

Proposition 71 Has Created a Monster

AP reports that first amendment groups are furious over tight secrecy concerning how $3 billion in tax dollars will be spent. ContraCostaTimes reports on "growing" complaints that the stem cell legislation offers too many opportunities to use stem cell money in California to make institutions rich. And it is certainly true that the stakeholders are running the show: "Many of the 29 board members, appointed by the governor and other elected officials to run the agency, represent research universities and the biotech industry, both of which are expected to win millions of dollars worth of grants."

Geron: Behemoth of the Stem Cell Race

Sacremento Bee reports on the importance of Geron and its patents for the race to acquire and license stem cell research technologies. It is a field in which there is a great deal of patent protection, as I wrote in a survey of the existing patents for a book Magnus, Caplan and I co-edited: Who Owns Life?. And now there are three billion dollars available for research that will in many cases produce licensing arrangements that filter automatically through Geron. This will be an interesting time for those who invest in biotechnology, but more interesting still for those who follow patent law in the life sciences, where the patent and trade offices in the US and European Union seem to have lost their minds. GM

Cuba's Biotech Revolution

Cuba is broke. So it is investing in biotechnology, specifically in the development of a pharmaceutical industry in Cuba to make and sell generic versions of patented pharmaceuticals (and, naturally, they do not hold the patents). It is an interesting strategy:

Faced with economic calamity, Castro did something remarkable: He poured hundreds of millions of dollars into pharmaceuticals. No one knows how - Cuba's economy, with its secrecy and centralized structure, defies market analysis. One beneficiary was Concepcion Campa Huergo, president and director general of the Finlay Institute, a vaccine lab in Havana. She developed the world's first meningitis B vaccine, testing it by injecting herself and her children before giving it to volunteers. "I remember one day telling Fidel that we needed a new ultracentrifuge, which costs about $70,000," Campa says. "After five minutes of listening he said, 'No. You'll need 10.'"...

It's like Castro said: They don't really like patents. They like medicine. Cuba's drug pipeline is most interesting for what it lacks: grand-slam moneymakers, cures for baldness or impotence or wrinkles. It's all cancer therapies, AIDS medications, and vaccines against tropical diseases.

[Link] Cuba has long had discussions about bioethics with faculty teams led by Stuart Youngner of Case Western Reserve University. It will be interesting to hear how that group reacts to this development; they have done a great deal for bioethics in that small nation.

DuPont CEO Announces Bioethics Guiding Principles

DuPont practically has its own news agency, and today it released a major piece about the benefits of biotechnology, including those tied to bioethics principles. If you dig you find their new advisory board, with links to a bioethics policy and perspectives of board members.