bayh-dole act

The Euphoric Drug of Profit - Part II - A Brief History of Drug R&D

In the previous post, The Euphoric Drug of Profit, I asked the simple question, should pharmaceutical drugs be for profit at all? They are life saving compounds after all, something for the public welfare and good.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), funds billions of taxpayer dollars in public research.

Before 1980, the results of publicly funded research, often performed at United States universities, was considered public domain (de facto).

Some of the problems with this scenario were:

  • basic research was not taken to product and final development
  • funding basic research does not fund the 75% additional costs of bring results to use by the general public