This piece by Bill Gates in the latest issue of Science is highly recommended:
Last year, I joined with other business leaders in a call to increase federal investment in energy R&D from $5 billion to $16 billion a year.† (Others, including the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, have also recommended substantial increases.‡) Recently, our group, the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC), issued a second report outlining ways to ensure that government research dollars are targeted wisely to achieve optimal returns. The report also suggests ways to pay for the increased investment: reducing or eliminating current subsidies to well-established energy industries, diverting a portion of royalties from domestic energy production, collecting a small fee on electricity sales, or imposing a price on carbon. Any combination of these could provide the funds needed to increase energy innovation. Even at almost triple the current level of government investment in energy innovation, the research dollars that the AEIC is advocating would represent a small fraction of the money presently spent on renewable energy subsidies and efficiency grants.
$230 million per drug in the early 1980s to $1.2 billion today, with R&D currently requiring about 10 to 15 years per drug. This investment of time and money cannot be sustained without a legal system that provides sufficient time to recoup the investment and to secure a reasonable return, as well as the ability to make important business decisions that remain correct over a long period of time. Pharmaceutical companies have historically relied on two kinds of market protection: (i) the exclusive ownership of their own clinical research and (ii) patents. However, the U.S. Hatch-Waxman Act, which is designed to strike a balance between innovative pharmaceutical research and access to generic drugs, is flawed. Further, U.S. courts sometimes retroactively change standards for patent protection long after large R&D efforts have been initiated, which increases the risk to defend and rely on patent protection.”
SIMON HEDLIN 