It must be in government genes to waste money.
"Citing slow pace of new drugs, US to open $1b development center" by Gardiner Harris, New York Times / January 23, 2011
NEW YORK — The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.
The new effort comes as many large drug makers, unable to find enough new drugs, are paring back research.
Promising discoveries about such illnesses as depression and Parkinson’s that once would have led to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort, and pharmaceutical companies have typically spent twice as much on marketing as on research, a business model that is increasingly suspect....
So now taxpayers will pay for the research whose patents can then be turned over to the pharmaceutical industry for profit.
Years of effort and tens of billions of dollars in financing by drug makers in gene-related research has largely been a bust.
Yeah, so let's pour some tax loot into the rat hole!
Whether the government can succeed where private industry has failed is uncertain, officials acknowledge, but they say doing nothing is not an option....
Yeah, let's throw a billion dollars taxpayers do not have into it!
That seems to be their answer to everything except when PEOPLE ACTUALLY NEED SOMETHING!
Btw, when government says doing nothing is not an option that is EXACTLY WHEN you want them to DO NOTHING!
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Also see: Billion Dollar Bioterror Boondoggle
