“The problem is that venture philanthropy is, essentially, another term for privatizing scientific research. Instead of decisions about the fate of scientific funding being made by publicly oriented institutions, those decisions are being put in the hands of anonymous philanthropists and ostensibly benevolent nonprofits… There is nothing to stop pharmaceutical companies from creating their own philanthropies, funding research with tax-exempt dollars and then selling themselves the rights to the intellectual property. Without price controls on the final product that come with public funding, the potential costs of the resulting medicines are limitless.”
There are certainly concerns to be had here, but I find this article a little reactive, and also we need new models. Or, we need the public funding and political support for long-term (on the scale of generations) maintenance of the scientific enterprise. Someone needs to be thinking about the people going in and out and the availability of money for them to do their research and have jobs, and funding and pathways for drugs to be developed even if there isn’t going to be a huge profit at the other side (see: Ebola vaccine).
No comments:
Post a Comment