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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Technorati Tags: Andy Grove, Pharma, Life Science, Biomedical



6 Comments
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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