An analysis of research papers has found that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided funding to the research of 210 new drugs that were approved from 2010 and 2016:
A new study makes a strong case for the importance of government support for basic research: Federally funded studies contributed to the science that underlies every one of the 210 new drugs approved between 2010 and 2016.
Researchers at Bentley University scoured millions of research papers for mentions of those 210 new molecular entities, or NMEs, as well as studies on their molecular targets. Then, they looked to see which of those studies had received any funding from the National Institutes of Health.
The authors say the study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to capture the full scope of public funding behind FDA-approved drugs, both directly and indirectly. They also say it points to the need for continued federal funding for basic science — which the Trump administration has previously suggested slashing.
"Knowing the scale of the investment in the basic science leading to new medicines is critical to ensuring that there is adequate funding for a robust pipeline of new cures in the future," said Dr. Fred Ledley, one of the study's authors and a Bentley University researcher who studies the intersection of science and industry.
Contribution of NIH funding to new drug approvals 2010–2016 (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1715368115) (DX)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @12:52AM (4 children)
Sorry, you're not getting it. Companies are just as "forced" to employ people as they are forced to do research. They always have the choices of automation, employment in the developing world, or just not doing the work at all. Meanwhile, abandoning research altogether will eventually either force the company to invest in someone else's research or disappear.
And what other model is any different? Short term thinkers circularly act the same no matter the economic model. What changes is that they get rewarded in some systems. That's happening in the present government nanny research models. Government does the research hence greatly reduced need for businesses to pay for their own research.
And government funding is one of the big reasons for that. It's hard to enter a market when the established players have government funding to lower the risk of their high cost research and the indie does not.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:12AM (1 child)
Companies are forced to employ people because someone as to do the grunt work, and the CEO ain't doing it.
And I propose that your economic paradigm encourages and rewards short-term thinkers while penalizing long-term thinkers. State-funded research is a hack around an economic policy that is inherently technologically stagnant.
The barrier of entry is all the expensive and hard to manufacture specialist equipment. A microbiology lab costs more than your typical biology nerd can casually spend.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:47AM
And as I already pointed out, that can be done with a machine, in a developing world country, or not at all.
The government nanny is not my economic paradigm. We also know that low government interference in US science from the period between the US Civil War and the start of the Second World War (the "Gilded Age") resulted in the transformation of the US from backwater colony to budding superpower with a world class scientific system. There was plenty of private-side investment in science, including pure science, during that period. So history doesn't fit your narrative.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @06:56AM (1 child)
No. Government funded research is not focused on revenue projections in the next 10 quarters. It's called basic research. What companies fund is applied science. You need the first to get the 2nd. Without someone funding basic research, you are stuck with no building blocks for your applied science funded by companies.
Who the fuck would fund CERN if not governments? Who would fund ITER? Or things like Hubble??? There is no application for any of these for decades. Decisions makers today will be long dead before any applied science can be derived from this stuff.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:52PM
It's the next election cycle instead.