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Andy Grove blasts the biomedical research establishment

Maybe Blogrunner will turn out to be useful after all. Via the new NYT service, I landed up at /.. Turns out Andy Grove, of Intel fame, ripped the biomedical research establishment at the Society of Neuroscience meeting.

He challenges big pharma companies, many of which haven’t had an important new compound approved in ages, and academic researchers who are content with getting NIH grants and publishing research papers with little regard to whether their work leads to something that can alleviate disease, to change their ways

The discussion at /. and the comments for the Newsweek article are interesting in their own right, but let me dwell on Grove’s critique. Does the biomedical establishment deserve his ire? Listen to the video to find out


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6 Comments

  1. Posted November 8, 2007 at 17:34 | Permalink

    There’s considerably more of a start-up mentality in tech, and there’s considerably less FDA regulation of tech. I recently was struck by this when an acquaintance of mine left his tech startup and moved into a biotech/diagnostics startup. He had no idea of the level of regulation in this area and kept bumping into regulatory obstacles of prohibitory complexity for a small startup everywhere he turned.

    Also, few people are scared that Intel will create a faster processor, but many people are scared that scientists will create a better brain. That’s the root of it. Now if we life scientists were as savvy at marketing ourselves, and if we had the boatloads of money dumped on startups that tech did in the early 90s, we might start getting somewhere.

    /says a researcher who’d like one of those boatloads, thanksverymuch

  2. Posted November 8, 2007 at 19:34 | Permalink

    There's considerably more of a start-up mentality in tech, and there's considerably less FDA regulation of tech. I recently was struck by this when an acquaintance of mine left his tech startup and moved into a biotech/diagnostics startup. He had no idea of the level of regulation in this area and kept bumping into regulatory obstacles of prohibitory complexity for a small startup everywhere he turned.

    Also, few people are scared that Intel will create a faster processor, but many people are scared that scientists will create a better brain. That's the root of it. Now if we life scientists were as savvy at marketing ourselves, and if we had the boatloads of money dumped on startups that tech did in the early 90s, we might start getting somewhere.

    /says a researcher who'd like one of those boatloads, thanksverymuch

  3. Posted November 9, 2007 at 21:57 | Permalink

    Culturally there is a lot of difference between tech and pharma, and even biotech. But the risk in the life sciences is significantly more and to make things worse, you can’t really tell in the early going. No wonder biotech VC funding is down.

    As for life scientists and marketing, look no further than my post on marketing science

  4. Posted November 9, 2007 at 23:57 | Permalink

    Culturally there is a lot of difference between tech and pharma, and even biotech. But the risk in the life sciences is significantly more and to make things worse, you can't really tell in the early going. No wonder biotech VC funding is down.

    As for life scientists and marketing, look no further than my post on marketing science

  5. Posted February 17, 2009 at 17:42 | Permalink

    There is a huge difference in mentality between engineers and biologists. Many of the synthetic biologists who come from other fields will say the same thing.

  6. Posted February 17, 2009 at 22:42 | Permalink

    There is a huge difference in mentality between engineers and biologists. Many of the synthetic biologists who come from other fields will say the same thing.

2 Trackbacks

  1. [...] I only bashed Andy Grove. Derek Lowe (for whom I voted in the weblog awards) has been on a tear, comparing the drug discovery business to Hollywood and to wildcatting for oil. Fantastic stuff!!! [...]

  2. [...] of you might recall my rant against Andy Grove, the former head honcho at Intel. While his bouts with Parkinsons and cancer are no laughing [...]

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