CGS-authored
If you pay somebody to build a house, you expect to benefit when it is finished. Probably you will live in it. Perhaps you will rent it or sell it for a profit.
Similarly, when you pay a biotech company to develop drugs and cures through stem-cell research, you expect a direct benefit. At a minimum, you deserve affordable access to the resultant drugs and therapies. Proposition 71, passed by voters in November 2004, takes $6 billion of California taxpayers' money -- yours and mine -- to fund bonds providing $3 billion for stem-cell research. Prop. 71 promises public benefit, but whether that actually comes about will depend on the details of who controls the discoveries and how technologies and treatments developed from those discoveries are priced.
Those details, known as intellectual property policies, are not spelled out in Proposition 71. On Wednesday, an institute committee will begin developing the IP rules for how Prop. 71 money is granted to biotech corporations. Your eyes probably glaze over at "intellectual property," but it's time to wake up and pay attention.
The...
Similarly, when you pay a biotech company to develop drugs and cures through stem-cell research, you expect a direct benefit. At a minimum, you deserve affordable access to the resultant drugs and therapies. Proposition 71, passed by voters in November 2004, takes $6 billion of California taxpayers' money -- yours and mine -- to fund bonds providing $3 billion for stem-cell research. Prop. 71 promises public benefit, but whether that actually comes about will depend on the details of who controls the discoveries and how technologies and treatments developed from those discoveries are priced.
Those details, known as intellectual property policies, are not spelled out in Proposition 71. On Wednesday, an institute committee will begin developing the IP rules for how Prop. 71 money is granted to biotech corporations. Your eyes probably glaze over at "intellectual property," but it's time to wake up and pay attention.
The...