How do you feel about the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences?

Awesome. The main problem with drug research was that scientists end up being, many times, corporate workhorses. Something like this may actually liberate researchers so that we can have scientists benefit from ownership of patents (not assuming that’s how this will work…) and oversight of research by the people (as taxpayers are the one providing the R&D funding).

We’ll see…but this is an interesting and cool development. As to the critique about “drugs don’t solve all our health issues” – well, I agree that there’s a “Big Pharma” rhetoric, but this doesn’t advance a mythology necessarily. Drugs to work…naturally occurring medicinal herbs also do the same. But the idea that this is mutually exclusive from cataloguing research is a false dichotomy. We can fund both – and that’s more jobs for the educated sector.

I’m suprised that it has taken them this long to move forward. LOL I’ve been expecting this and much more in the next few years. Keep watching.

Seems like a good idea to me. I can’t say I have strong feelings about it either way.

That article is hilarious, though.

If the products are in the public domain then it is a good thing.

In the project’s FAQ I can’t find any clues about that
http://feedback.nih.gov/index.php/faq-ncats/

@jaytkay – I don’t think that it’s a good thing for them to be in the public domain, necessarily. I do think, however, that a deal that the government can develop with an individual in terms of how the inventor/researcher/discoverer can personally benefit from the sale and distribution of it will inevitably end up in it costing less than it would in a corporate context…