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Three young scientists thing they have a way to defeat antibiotic resistance:
Three college-age scientists think they know how to solve a huge problem facing medicine. They think they've found a way to overcome antibiotic resistance. Many of the most powerful antibiotics have lost their efficacy against dangerous bacteria, so finding new antibiotics is a priority. It's too soon to say for sure if the young researchers are right, but if gumption and enthusiasm count for anything, they stand a fighting chance.
[...] Last October, Stanford launched a competition for students interested in developing solutions for big problems in health care. Not just theoretical solutions, but practical, patentable solutions that could lead to real products. The three young scientists thought they had figured out a way to make a set of proteins that would kill antibiotic resistant bacteria. They convinced a jury of Stanford faculty, biotech types and investors that they were onto something, and got $10,000 to develop their idea.
[...] "The way that our proteins operate, that if the bacteria evolve resistance to them, actually the bacteria can no longer live anymore," says Rosenthal. "We target something that's essential to bacterial survival." Bacteria have managed to evolve a way around even the most sophisticated attempts to kill them, so I was curious to know more about how the proteins these young inventors say they've found worked. "We're not able to disclose, unfortunately," says Filsinger Interrante. It's their intellectual property, she explains, that they hope will attract investors. "We think that our protein has the potential to target very dangerous, multidrug-resistant bacteria."
Peer review, meet news review.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @07:01AM
yeah. here's what I think: let's everyone make a list of people who say that them being paid for their antibiotics is more important than distributing the antibiotics. and let's add their pictures next to their names.
patents and other "intelectual property" (whatever that can mean) are social constructs. if these people believe that their monetary wellbeing is more important than other people's health, I say let them. but I want to know their names; if I see them hit by a car and in need of aid, I want to know that I can ignore them because they are not part of MY society.
helping those in need is ALSO a social construct, and since they feel free to ignore it, I think society should feel free to ignore it as well. "before I get you off the road, I want to talk to a lawyer. I thought of this particular way of grabbing you, and I think it may be a new method that I can patent. then it would be problematic to do it in public, because people might steal the idea... I have to think of my children's future you see"
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday August 10 2016, @11:02AM
Why would all property not be a social construct?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @11:53AM
well... if you understand the concept of property as "this thing here is Bob's, everybody needs to ask Bob if they want to do anything to/with it, even if Bob is not around right that minute", then yes, all property is a social construct.
if you understand the concept of property as "if you touch this Bob will beat the crap out of you", then not all property is a social construct.
my food, for instance, is mine because I will physically fight to protect it from people who would want to touch it or smth. I like the fact that society also protects my food, but I generally don't need society to agree that my food is off-limits (as a young healthy male, I would generally be able to protect it from other individuals).
as far as I can tell, anything labeled "intelectual property" needs the whole society to agree it is property, since the "beat the crap out of offenders" won't work if the whole society decides to offend the restriction.
this is basically the balance: you need to keep enough of society happy with you being in control of "X", so that the happy percentage can enforce your claims of property of "X".
when it comes to medical treatments, the happy percentage is basically made up of uneducated idiots who don't know what's good for them or society as a whole (if they did, then treatments for bacterial infections would be free and much better handled in general).
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday August 10 2016, @06:09PM
And if all of society decided you were hogging the good food and decided to take it from you, you wouldn't be able to defend it either. I suppose I'm bristling at the dual standards. In one case (physical goods) you are assuming a single person on person conflict, with you present, alert equally armed. In second case (intellectual goods) you are assuming the entire society decides to gang up on you. I would contend the difference has far more to do with the strength of opposition than the nature of the property.
Now, you may think that society will gang up on you in one case, but not the other, as a rule. But that seems like it would need evidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @11:28PM
I'm sorry, poor word choice on my part.
what I wanted to say is that violent enforcement won't work if every individual who has minor contacts with Bob decides to "steal", since it's hard for Bob to run around after all of these first-hand offenders, and they can immediately propell the information to other people that Bob has never met.
case in point: Bob invents a melody, sings a song while picking berries. someone hears this song, and then repeats it out of earshot, etc. Bob can certainly beat the crap out of the people he hears singing the song, but he will never find all of them. so he needs everyone to agree that whenever they hear a song, they ask who invented the melody, and then search out the author and reward them in some way.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Saturday August 13 2016, @04:31AM
Sure it's easier to detect someone taking the food from your table. But what happens when you are out getting more food, and your stockpile is just sitting there? Or having a car, parking it, and going into a building?
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Wednesday August 10 2016, @06:24PM
You forgot the other, more important portion of that happy percentage. The medical companies that make billions trading on people's lives, plus the entire financial sector to the degree it profits on that indirectly. The uneducated are a nice filler so they can wave their hands and point to "the majority" to bolster their claims, but at the end of the day it's all about who puts the most cash in lawmakers pockets.
It's lovely to see Stanford educating the next generation that their personal payday is more important than people's lives. I'm sure that's going to work out well for society in the long run.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday August 10 2016, @11:48AM
That's a great idea - except then we won't have anybody working on developing new antibiotics at all. Developing pharmaceuticals, even at the research level, is an expensive undertaken. Nobody will invest in this if they do not think there is likelihood of a payday. And even if the researchers were the most pure-hearted souls who wanted to help people, the best way to get their technology out there is to secure investment from a Big Pharma to make it happen... which requires keeping the value of your IP so that they will be enticed.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 10 2016, @06:33PM
So who ponies up the $10K in your scenario?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @11:31PM
same people. the difference is that the payment is for developing the idea, not an "investment" to be repayed tenfold from future profits. researchers should be paid for getting results (and they already are), not for "distributing the results".