When a private company spends $2 billion on research, it can end up earning over its lifetime, say, $10 billion in profit on the drug, due to patent extensions. Those excess profits represent a huge redistribution of income from the sick and old to shareholders and managers. If the NIH spent $2 billion on research, it could produce a drug at cost - meaning the cost would be borne mostly by the rich and there would be no redistribution from the sick and old. The welfare gains would be huge, not to mention the efficiency gains from a far more rational allocation of research to serious ailments rather than hair loss.
Maybe it would all be cancelled out by the alleged incompetence of public agencies, but I smell some rank ideology therein.
Seth
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It smells more than rank.
I have debated with myself (screamed obscenities at the screen while reading) over whether to struggle with this thread or not. The real question is how to approach it in a way that first illustrates that it is basically neoliberal propaganda---the propagandistic pseudo-attack on central planning, which was and still is centrally defined, planned, coordinated, and implemented since at least the Roosevelt Administration. This is just the economic version of land-of-the-free-home-of-the-brave nonsense put out for some ideological styling.
Let's start with the idea that somehow, just because federal government agencies farm out R&D, demonstration projects, and on-going services over numerous grants and contracts that this system is somehow not primarily a centrally planned and implemented set of highly coordinated policies and principles that are aimed at producing fairly specific results. Well, guess what, that's what the government does. And the US government is very good at it---despite its veneer of stumbling free market bullshit.
The best way to actually see the central concepts involved is to read the proposal guidelines over several fields in a single agency and gauge what those goals are and then repeat the exercise over several related agencies to view the larger conceptual frameworks. The fastest way to do this is to go look at the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA):
http://www.cfda.gov/public/cat-whatshere.htm
If you want a quick look at what I am talking about here is the list:
http://www.cfda.gov/public/agy_list.asp
These are the executive branch cabinet agencies and they do little else than centrally design, plan, measure and coordinate every aspect and activity of this country, its economy, people, society, culture, material resources, and their respective interactions. Click on any item listed and you will get the idea pretty fast.
Here I just picked one at random, Office of Insular Affairs. Here is the description, ``Promotes the economic, social, and political development of the territories of Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianna Islands, and the Freely Associated States. Parent Agency: Dept of the Interior.
Here is another at random.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Parent Agency, Dept of Labor. Description, ``Develops and promulgates occupational safety and health standards, develops and issues regulations, conducts investigations and inspections to determine the status of compliance with safety and health standards and regulations, issues citations and proposes penalties for noncompliance with safety and health standards and regulations.''
Here is another up higher on the list which I picked because I have no idea what they do.
National Agricultural Statistics Service. Parent Agency, Department of Agriculture. Here is the description:
``Agricultural estimates involve collecting, analyzing, and publishing agricultural production and marketing data, including: number of farms and acreage in farms; crop acreage, yields, production, stocks, value, and utilization; inventories and production of livestock, poultry, eggs, and dairy products; prices received by farmers for products, prices paid for commodities and services for living and production, and related indexes; farm employment and wage rates; cold storage supplies; agricultural chemical use; aquaculture; and other relevant aspects of the agricultural economy. Estimates for about 120 crops and 45 livestock items are published in about 400 Federal and 9,000 State-Federal reports each year. Beginning in 1997, NASS is responsible for the Census of Agriculture, previously conducted by the Bureau of the Census, Commerce Department. The Census of Agriculture is taken every 5 years and provides comprehensive data down to the county level on all aspects of the agricultural economy for the U.S., as well as selected data for American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. All information is made available to the news media and the public at scheduled release times and is available for free on the Internet. Statistical research and service is directed toward improving crop and livestock estimating techniques. Considerable emphasis is placed on improving survey sample designs as well as testing new forecasting and estimating techniques, such as using satellite data.''
Bingo. Now tell me some more neoliberal free market bather about how it all works so nicely without any central design, planning, measurement, coordination or governance. Hogwash.
Let's pick the overview of programs in NSF in Biology and try the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences:
(http://www.nsf.gov/bio/mcb/start.htm)
``Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences
The Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB) supports research and related activities that contribute to a fundamental understanding of life processes at the molecular, subcellular, and cellular levels.
Investigator-initiated research proposals are considered in the following programs: Biomolecular Structure and Function, Biomolecular Processes, Cell Biology, and Genetics. Programs in MCB also support fundamental studies leading to technological innovation, proposals with substantial computational components, and multidisciplinary and small group research. MCB programs particularly encourage submission of proposals involving microbial biology, plant biology, theoretical/computational aspects of molecular and cellular studies, molecular evolution, and biomolecular materials. Genomic approaches are encouraged in all areas. In fiscal years 1999 - 2001 the Division has coordinated a special BIO-wide competition for Microbial Observatories. In addition, the Division supports a variety of NSF-wide activities including research on Biocomplexity, and Life in Extreme Environments, and Foundation-wide activities designed to promote integration of research and education such as CAREER, and RUI. The Division also considers proposals for limited support of special meetings and workshops as well as the Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology (UMEB) activity which is intended to provide support for talented students to gain research experiences in biological sciences related to the environment and to foster an enriched and culturally diverse research and educational environment.''
Further up on this site, NSF notes it doesn't do bio-science in human disease or support the etiology of disease related goals. That's because that part of picture is handled by NIH, CDC, FDA and several others. This division of duties was originally put in to separate biology from medicine, but that is eroding with the human genome projects, just as plant studies are eroding the NSF division with Dept of Agriculture. In other words these are becoming more centralized and not less centralized.
Really Brad, I can't understand how you get away with mouthing all that jive on free markets when you have worked in government and are now in academia where all day long, all you do is figure out how to centrally manage vast integrated systems. That's what central planners do. You have met your enemy and you are it.
Chuck Grimes