Tag Archive: medicine

Rare Good News in AIDS Fight


The potential impact of this is huge.

It’s really one of those problems that we would thought would be gone by now, but hospital infections and diseases haven’t gone away.  According to this Scientific American piece, the problem has gotten worse.


Increased use of antibiotics has created new breeds of superbugs that are antibiotic-resistant and hospitals have become dependent on antibiotics in lieu of proper hygiene.

This proposed law in New York wants physicians to forego neckties, but the law misses the forest for the trees.  The issue is not to pick and choose which particular hygiene rules to follow, but rather for hospitals to have comprehensive policies to minimize infection in the first place.

Open Source Biology



My thoughts: it’s about the time value of money.  By speeding up the process of drug development, even if the parties get smaller pieces of the pie, they still come out ahead.  One challenge would be to determine appropriate percentages for each group.

A second challenge would be how to ensure intellectual property protection.  There may be a patent law 102(b) bar with the disclosures coming so much earlier in the process.  Two quick potential solutions: 1) Keep the technology closed within the network (so there’s no public disclosure) and 2) File more patents and file earlier in the processes.   Or the parties could accept the disclosure of the earlier products if the final products are sufficiently valuable and more quickly developed.

(via Slashdot)

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