Monday, December 7, 2009

Partnering for Cures Coverage Highlights

Maria Bartiromo, anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell, speaks with Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, FDA deputy commissioner; Dr. Gail Cassell, Eli Lilly & Co. vice president for scientific affairs and Michael Milken, FasterCures chairman about preventing chronic disease, investing in innovation, putting a cost on cures, ensuring access, and forecasting the promise of healthcare reform. View interview.
From the blogosphere:

2 comments:

Rick Martinez said...

Watching the body language between the industry representative and the federal regulator during this "Partnering for Cures Interview” was as interesting.
Interactions between 'the Industry' and 'the Regulator' has fascinated me ever since left the government as a federal scientist and joined industry.
A respectful working relationship between these two entities is crucial to health care innovation. And the civil exchanges between industry and the authorities that regulate it is fostered by and depends upon a coherent ethical and legal framework that shapes the right environment for collaboration. Over the past few years, that framework has become more complex, hence more difficult to navigate mostly becomes it has suffered attacks from critics of industry-academic relationships.
Today everyone speaks about the importance of industry- academic partnerships being the vehicle for health care innovation. However, at another level, there is not enough conversation about the excessive rulemaking shaping America’s scientific environment that potentially undermines the these relationships with complicated and difficult to navigate guidelines.
That rulemaking inside (and outside) academia is destabilizing America’s innovation environment. Academic inventors who receive federal funds and want to enter into negotiations with industry or equity groups must confront levels of scrutiny that at times discourages. At some academic centers the rules almost seem adversarial steeped in basic misunderstandings—points of view that obstruct the big picture—the ‘right’ of contract and innovation with seemingly zealous concerns over ‘conflicts’ of interest.
Ultimately these collaborations are stigmatized. And that stigma has a concerning effect on the pipeline of students and junior investigators who are influenced by industry-critics that believe such collaborations are an absolute 'conflict of interest'.
Let’s see more discussion about how America can re-dedicate itself to health innovation. Let’s hear more about the importance of cooperation, collaboration and rights of contracts between industry and federally funded science. Help the public understand how “cures” really come about. And let’s learn more how we return coherence to science policy that ensures a research enterprise with clear guidelines that foster a genuinely innovation-friendly environment that produces the cures that people need and want.
I will continue to watch with interest.
Rick M. (Metuchen NJ)

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