The last few days I have been reading through a legal decision. Not my standard reading material. The decision, however, grabbed my attention. In this case you see so much of what is right or wrong in the US today, whether you look at our economy or our health care system. The case involved the ACLU, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Myriad Genetics and Directors of the University of Utah. In short, the ACLU had filed a petition contesting multiple patents given to Myriad Genetics by the USPTO. These patents were for various genes that indicated a predisposition to breast cancer. The University of Utah was listed as a defendant as the discovery of these genes was made in their facilities by faculty member, who went on to form Myriad.
The ACLU were arguing that one cannot patent a piece of DNA. They argued that genes are found in nature and not something created or invented by man. One cannot own a gene sequence. The claim that one owns a gene is perhaps equivalent to the discoverer of oak trees claiming he now owned all oak trees. I caught several discussions of this case on the cable news outlets and the News Hour and kept thinking that Myriad cannot own the gene but rather must own the method of identification for thee genes. It seems, however, that my hunch was wrong. Myriad used fairly standard methods to locate and discover these genes, and now when someone wants to confirm if they have a predisposition for these cancers, they must go to Myriad.
For the next seven years Myriad has a monopoly on these genes as they did the work and determined which sequence predisposes one to these cancers. In that time, if you want to know if you are predisposed to these cancers, you have to go to a Myriad lab. What differentiated Myriad from other groups offering such services, at least in my quick read of the decision, was that they were not offering access to their product to lower income patients. With that, the ACLU intervened and Myriad of course argued that this was not the case in regard to access. In short, it seems you are given ownership of genes and the fruit of those genes, as long as you make them accessible to those who are in need of such diagnostic tools.
This legal decision, however, challenged that deal now as it claims that genes are found in nature and cannot be patented. Myriad will appeal the decision and I will bet that in the end they will continue to hold the patents for these genes. In one article it was stated that 20% of the human genome is owned by such firms. I cannot believe that 20% is already owned, but no doubt pharma companies and researchers are wasting no time.
Again, this case reveals something about the American system, our economy, our health care system, and the relation between public and private institutions. Front and center is the disparity of wealth. The ACLU filed this case on behalf of a woman who was not able to afford Myriad's diagnostic test. On the other hand, if it were not for Myriad, the diagnostic tool to determine her predisposition for certain cancers would not exist. One of the key reasons for rising health care cost is the cost of the R&D associated with such diagnostic tools and other advances.
So far I have tried to point to two areas of interest. First there was the issue of whether you can own a gene, or does one own a method to determine a gene. Then there is a second issue-the social justice of making such diagnostic tools available to all, and likewise the need to properly compensate the researchers who discovered this process and/or gene sequence. There is, however, a third area that grabbed me in this case. The research was conducted at the University of Utah, but the group that owns these genes is Myriad.
If you read the decision, you get some idea of the relationship between basic research and the process of bringing research-based products to market. The US has the best university systems and it is at these institutions that basic research is conducted. The US also has the best system of venture capital. This case allows you to get a glimpse of the nexus between basic research, happening at our universities, the researchers who see the possibilities of this research, and the venture capitalist who provide the capital to facilitate bringing the product to market.
The venture capitalist, will do this, if and only if there is a potential for a return. In short, venture capitalist and the researcher, require the ownership of the product, in this case a gene. They are gambling that their investment of time and money will pay off. And not only do they have the cost of bringing the product out of the lab, from what was basic research, they also need to license the research from the university. The University basically becomes a partner in the ventures their researchers pursue, which involves the results of work done in the university's labs.
So from public universities doing basic research you have all kinds of new products being brought to market. Genes slices just happen to be the topic of this article and case. This case mayb not be cloth from which movies are made, but it is, very much the cloth from which our political debates regarding social justice, and the the relation of public and private institutions is being cut.
For the New York Times article on this case, click here
And for the judge's decision or opinion, to which I refer click here, again courtesy of the NY Times
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
David Brook's Take on the Healthcare Bill and its Passage
David Brooks, columnist for the NY Times offered some intersting comments on healthcare, the two political parties and where we are today. Below is that article from the NY Times - March 22nd 2010.
Parties come to embody causes. For the past 90 years or so, the Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of personal freedom and economic dynamism. For a similar period, the Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of fairness and family security. Over the past century, they have built a welfare system, brick by brick, to guard against the injuries of fate.
If you grew up, as I did, with a Hubert Humphrey poster on your wall and a tradition of Democratic Party activism in your family, you recognize the Democratic DNA in the content of this bill and in the way it was passed. There was the inevitable fractiousness, the neuroticism, the petty logrolling, but also the basic concern for the vulnerable and the high idealism.
And there was also the faith in the grand liberal project. Democrats protected the unemployed starting with the New Deal, then the old, then the poor. Now, thanks to health care reform, millions of working families will go to bed at night knowing that they are not an illness away from financial ruin.
For apostates like me, watching this bill go through the meat grinder was like watching an old family reunion. One glimpse and you got the whole panoply of what you loved and found annoying about these people.
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were fit to play the leading roles. They both embody the two great wings of the party, the high-minded aspirations of the educated class and the machinelike toughness of the party apparatus. Obama and Pelosi both possess the political tenaciousness that you only get if you live for government and believe ruthlessly in its possibilities. They could have scaled back their aspirations at any time but they hung tough.
Members of the Obama-Pelosi team have spent the past year on a wandering, tortuous quest — enduring the exasperating pettiness of small-minded members, hostile public opinion, just criticism and gross misinformation, a swarm of cockeyed ideas and the erroneous predictions of people like me who thought the odds were against them. For sheer resilience, they deserve the honor of posterity.
Yet I confess, watching all this, I feel again why I’m no longer spiritually attached to the Democratic Party. The essence of America is energy — the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the people and the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders. It was nurtured by 19th-century Republicans who built the railroads and the land-grant colleges to weave free markets across great distances. It was nurtured by Progressives who broke the stultifying grip of the trusts.
Today, America’s vigor is challenged on two fronts. First, the country is becoming geriatric. Other nations spend 10 percent or so of their G.D.P. on health care. We spend 17 percent and are predicted to soon spend 20 percent and then 25 percent. This legislation was supposed to end that asphyxiating growth, which will crowd out investments in innovation, education and everything else. It will not.
With the word security engraved on its heart, the Democratic Party is just not structured to cut spending that would enhance health and safety. The party nurtures; it does not say, “No more.”
The second biggest threat to America’s vibrancy is the exploding federal debt. Again, Democrats can utter the words of fiscal restraint, but they don’t feel the passion. This bill is full of gimmicks designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but not to really balance the budget. Democrats did enough to solve their political problem (not looking fiscally reckless) but not enough to solve the genuine problem.
Nobody knows how this bill will work out. It is an undertaking exponentially more complex than the Iraq war, for example. But to me, it feels like the end of something, not the beginning of something. It feels like the noble completion of the great liberal project to build a comprehensive welfare system.
The task ahead is to save this country from stagnation and fiscal ruin. We know what it will take. We will have to raise a consumption tax. We will have to preserve benefits for the poor and cut them for the middle and upper classes. We will have to invest more in innovation and human capital.
The Democratic Party, as it revealed of itself over the past year, does not seem to be up to that coming challenge (neither is the Republican Party). This country is in the position of a free-spending family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity. You admire the act of generosity, but you wish they had sold a few of the Mercedes to pay for it.
Parties come to embody causes. For the past 90 years or so, the Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of personal freedom and economic dynamism. For a similar period, the Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of fairness and family security. Over the past century, they have built a welfare system, brick by brick, to guard against the injuries of fate.
If you grew up, as I did, with a Hubert Humphrey poster on your wall and a tradition of Democratic Party activism in your family, you recognize the Democratic DNA in the content of this bill and in the way it was passed. There was the inevitable fractiousness, the neuroticism, the petty logrolling, but also the basic concern for the vulnerable and the high idealism.
And there was also the faith in the grand liberal project. Democrats protected the unemployed starting with the New Deal, then the old, then the poor. Now, thanks to health care reform, millions of working families will go to bed at night knowing that they are not an illness away from financial ruin.
For apostates like me, watching this bill go through the meat grinder was like watching an old family reunion. One glimpse and you got the whole panoply of what you loved and found annoying about these people.
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were fit to play the leading roles. They both embody the two great wings of the party, the high-minded aspirations of the educated class and the machinelike toughness of the party apparatus. Obama and Pelosi both possess the political tenaciousness that you only get if you live for government and believe ruthlessly in its possibilities. They could have scaled back their aspirations at any time but they hung tough.
Members of the Obama-Pelosi team have spent the past year on a wandering, tortuous quest — enduring the exasperating pettiness of small-minded members, hostile public opinion, just criticism and gross misinformation, a swarm of cockeyed ideas and the erroneous predictions of people like me who thought the odds were against them. For sheer resilience, they deserve the honor of posterity.
Yet I confess, watching all this, I feel again why I’m no longer spiritually attached to the Democratic Party. The essence of America is energy — the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the people and the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders. It was nurtured by 19th-century Republicans who built the railroads and the land-grant colleges to weave free markets across great distances. It was nurtured by Progressives who broke the stultifying grip of the trusts.
Today, America’s vigor is challenged on two fronts. First, the country is becoming geriatric. Other nations spend 10 percent or so of their G.D.P. on health care. We spend 17 percent and are predicted to soon spend 20 percent and then 25 percent. This legislation was supposed to end that asphyxiating growth, which will crowd out investments in innovation, education and everything else. It will not.
With the word security engraved on its heart, the Democratic Party is just not structured to cut spending that would enhance health and safety. The party nurtures; it does not say, “No more.”
The second biggest threat to America’s vibrancy is the exploding federal debt. Again, Democrats can utter the words of fiscal restraint, but they don’t feel the passion. This bill is full of gimmicks designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but not to really balance the budget. Democrats did enough to solve their political problem (not looking fiscally reckless) but not enough to solve the genuine problem.
Nobody knows how this bill will work out. It is an undertaking exponentially more complex than the Iraq war, for example. But to me, it feels like the end of something, not the beginning of something. It feels like the noble completion of the great liberal project to build a comprehensive welfare system.
The task ahead is to save this country from stagnation and fiscal ruin. We know what it will take. We will have to raise a consumption tax. We will have to preserve benefits for the poor and cut them for the middle and upper classes. We will have to invest more in innovation and human capital.
The Democratic Party, as it revealed of itself over the past year, does not seem to be up to that coming challenge (neither is the Republican Party). This country is in the position of a free-spending family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity. You admire the act of generosity, but you wish they had sold a few of the Mercedes to pay for it.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
An Introduction
This is the first posting of this new blog. I do write and post items to another blog that is more music oriented, titled the Western Front, which is attached to my Feast of Noise site (http://www.feastofnoise.com/), which largely focuses on rock and alternative music in and around NYC.
This one, however, will be in my Linkedin account and will focus on technology trends and new technology. In short items that intrigue me and make me pause in the course of the day. As I am often not sure what else to do with this information I figure I can at least post them here and share them.
For those who have interest, they can pursue these items further, perhaps drop me a note, or at least like myself say to themselves that it is interesting. I figure, you never know, someone might respond to my postings with an idea on how or what should follow. I figure the least I can do is at least share them.
With that, below are three items I have seen in the last few weeks that have caught my attention and which have propelled me to finally set this up:
1. In Electrical Engineering a team at HP Labs has developed a "memory resistor" or memristor. A memristor is a fourth type of electrical circuit. Up until now there were basically three categories - the capacitor, resistor and the inductor. All of the circuitry we use entails those three basic circuits. When you consider what we have done with those three, to add a fourth sounds very promising!
What really caught my attention, however, is what this device does. The original article explains that the "resistance of the devices at any point in time is a function of history of the device –- or how much charge went through it either forwards or backwards." In short it is a resistor with a memory.
The two projects that the article point to for the device is non-volatile random access memory (RAM), and simulation of a human brain or neuronal computing. Time will tell if these happen. HP Labs is doing the research so I could certainly see the possibiity of a computer where if you have a power failure, you reboot, and whatever was in RAM- all of it - is still there.
When I read this article, however, I instantly went back to Kurt Godel and Douglas Hofstadter. and the issue of self-reference. I guess that is what memory is all about and likewise a memristor might have some element of that.
For the full article, check out http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/scientists-prov/#ixzz0ikleoZP5
2. The second item that caught my attention was a new electronic futures exchange that Cantor Fitzgerald is going open in April, and with it a new asset class - Movies. The new market will allow investors to buy futures for new movies coming out. In short any and all will be able to bet on the box office draw of a movie. If you think you know a movie that will be the next Big Fat Greek Wedding or the next bomb, this will be the place to place your bets and see if you were right. So much for mortgage backed securities.
For more details check out http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L4XB20100222
3. The last item I just saw in the last day or two - that Google, Intel, and Sony have teamed up to develop a box for on top of your TV, or next to your TV in the age of flat screens, that will facilitate access to the web. Basically the product will allow you access to all the video content on the web, plus any and all other sites, all of which would now be available in your living room.
Apple several weeks ago was also reported to be exploring this nexus of web and television. Of course today, the big one that I believe is having some success is Hulu, which stream television content on the web. Hulu, however, is over on the other side of this Nexus. They are bringing TV to the web. With this Google, Intel, and Sony partnership, they are working on the other end, bringing the content from the web over back into your TV.
All of those threads along with the recent acquisition of NBC by Comcast is just the beginning of how these two mediums, the web and television, will being fighting it out over how we get our news, and entertainment.
For the details on this you can go to http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/technology/18webtv.html
Hopefully I continue and add items of interest, and even better perhaps go the next step and do something with them! No doubt not every posting will focus on new technology or trends. I do hope that I might sit down and write some commentary on these. We shall see.
This one, however, will be in my Linkedin account and will focus on technology trends and new technology. In short items that intrigue me and make me pause in the course of the day. As I am often not sure what else to do with this information I figure I can at least post them here and share them.
For those who have interest, they can pursue these items further, perhaps drop me a note, or at least like myself say to themselves that it is interesting. I figure, you never know, someone might respond to my postings with an idea on how or what should follow. I figure the least I can do is at least share them.
With that, below are three items I have seen in the last few weeks that have caught my attention and which have propelled me to finally set this up:
1. In Electrical Engineering a team at HP Labs has developed a "memory resistor" or memristor. A memristor is a fourth type of electrical circuit. Up until now there were basically three categories - the capacitor, resistor and the inductor. All of the circuitry we use entails those three basic circuits. When you consider what we have done with those three, to add a fourth sounds very promising!
What really caught my attention, however, is what this device does. The original article explains that the "resistance of the devices at any point in time is a function of history of the device –- or how much charge went through it either forwards or backwards." In short it is a resistor with a memory.
The two projects that the article point to for the device is non-volatile random access memory (RAM), and simulation of a human brain or neuronal computing. Time will tell if these happen. HP Labs is doing the research so I could certainly see the possibiity of a computer where if you have a power failure, you reboot, and whatever was in RAM- all of it - is still there.
When I read this article, however, I instantly went back to Kurt Godel and Douglas Hofstadter. and the issue of self-reference. I guess that is what memory is all about and likewise a memristor might have some element of that.
For the full article, check out http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/scientists-prov/#ixzz0ikleoZP5
2. The second item that caught my attention was a new electronic futures exchange that Cantor Fitzgerald is going open in April, and with it a new asset class - Movies. The new market will allow investors to buy futures for new movies coming out. In short any and all will be able to bet on the box office draw of a movie. If you think you know a movie that will be the next Big Fat Greek Wedding or the next bomb, this will be the place to place your bets and see if you were right. So much for mortgage backed securities.
For more details check out http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L4XB20100222
3. The last item I just saw in the last day or two - that Google, Intel, and Sony have teamed up to develop a box for on top of your TV, or next to your TV in the age of flat screens, that will facilitate access to the web. Basically the product will allow you access to all the video content on the web, plus any and all other sites, all of which would now be available in your living room.
Apple several weeks ago was also reported to be exploring this nexus of web and television. Of course today, the big one that I believe is having some success is Hulu, which stream television content on the web. Hulu, however, is over on the other side of this Nexus. They are bringing TV to the web. With this Google, Intel, and Sony partnership, they are working on the other end, bringing the content from the web over back into your TV.
All of those threads along with the recent acquisition of NBC by Comcast is just the beginning of how these two mediums, the web and television, will being fighting it out over how we get our news, and entertainment.
For the details on this you can go to http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/technology/18webtv.html
Hopefully I continue and add items of interest, and even better perhaps go the next step and do something with them! No doubt not every posting will focus on new technology or trends. I do hope that I might sit down and write some commentary on these. We shall see.
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