4 ms·

While I agree with the premise that open source could, in theory, serve the long tail better, I think the barrier to entry of pharmacological research is far hi

While I agree with the premise that open source could, in theory, serve the long tail better, I think the barrier to entry of pharmacological research is far higher than that of software development. It should be noted that this is not without reason. Controlled, double-blind studies are necessary for development of medicine and they are hard to do without a substantial amount of funds. This barrier to entry may decrease as biological models become cheaper and more accessible, but even as a hopeful bioinformatician, I am skeptical of this happening in the near term (10-15 years).

crdoconnor 10y ago
Governments have lots of money. Even if a government research department was 20% less effective than an equivalent private sector research department (which I strongly doubt; they're probably equivalent), it would still be more cost effective. Pharma marketing budgets are titanic and that's an epic waste of money.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  I decided to look into this. I pulled the financials for Pfizer, Merck, and AstraZeneca. Their research and development (R&D) spending, while significantly less than their Selling, General, and Administrative (SGA) spending, it is still comparable. Considering SGA includes a lot more than just advertising I would wager that their actual ad budgets (at least for Merck and AstraZeneca) are less than their R&D budgets. Pfizer: $7,690 million R&D, $14,809 million SGA Merck: $6,704 million R&D, $10,313 million SGA AstraZeneca: $5,997 million R&D, $9,951 million SGA