Abstract

The roles of government, industry, and academia in science research have been recast repeatedly since the U.S. began infusing tremendous funding during WWII. Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) proposed a billion-dollar center to intervene in commercial drug development with the objective of lifting it out of a frightening fifteen-year slump in productivity. This article questions the role of the U.S. government in pharmaceutical development after completion of a map of the human genome (the touchstone of the Human Genome Project, HGP), a research undertaking spearheaded by the U.S. Government that spanned more than a decade. Specifically, the article proposes that the U.S. return to its WWII-era science past and draw from the contemporary human genome mapping experience to advance human clinical research and improve drug development—to lift it out of its depressing state of disappointment. The article concludes that substantial, direct government involvement in clinical research is essential at this time to raise the science standard. Other crucially needed benefits include increasing research transparency in an era of aggressive science commercialization and intellectual property protection, ensuring the integrity of resulting data in an age of academia-industry integration that spans from the research bench (basic research) to pharmacy shelves, improving drug effectiveness, and thereby rising to the occasion of meeting dire human health needs. The proposed government intervention in clinical research, arguably essential to overcome the dismal state of drug development and skepticism about its foreseeable future in spite of unprecedented investment, would launch a new era in U.S. science research funding.

Comments

51 U. Louisville L. Rev. 101 (2012)

Keywords

Competition (Economics), Investments, United States, Manhattan Project (U.S.), Investment Advice, Miscellaneous Financial Investment Activities, Science -- Finance, United States -- Politics & government

Date of Authorship for this Version

2012

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