Brazil gets 40% cut on AIDS drugs

[James Baird]

Drug 
> >companies like making new variants on old drugs,
> not taking "risky 
> >[or deeply uncertain] long-term bets."
> 
> 
> Which is perhaps a good place to draw the line
> between (public) basic 
> research and (private) applied research...
> 

I still fail to see the fundamental difference.  In
both cases, you have to develop promising lines of
research, continuously evaluate them based on some
kind of peer-review process, etc.  Putting it in the
hands of private industry just splits the process up
into competing camps that don't share information.

In the case of consumer goods, where adapting to
customer feedback is a large part of the process,
private applied research is probably a lot more
flexible.  But consumer feedback is not an issue in
drug development - it's simply a matter of finding
"the best drug". 

Jim Baird

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