If running the banks, healthcare and car companies wasn't enough, the Obama Administration apparently wants to get into the biotech business.
It already set up a venture capital firm in Dept of Treasury to dole out $1 billiion to small companies to the projects of it's choosing. This, at a time when private VC financing for life sciences is actually up. But no matter, the biotech genuises at Treas. who I am sure have extensive investment and biotech backgrounds, will hand out tax credits that can be used to offset losses or as collateral for other funding. Sound familar?
Now comes the administration's response to their botching of the H1N1 production and distribution effort. By insisting on single doses to avoid the fearmongering of vaccine critics, HHS delayed the roll out of the vaccine by months. The snafu forced a re-examination of the government's role in preparing the nation for both pandemics and bioterrorism. Thus HHS just released " The Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Review" where Secretary Sebelius said “Our nation must have a system that is nimble and flexible enough to produce medical countermeasures quickly in the face of any attack or threat, whether it’s a threat we know about today or a new one,”
It's solutio for becoming nimble and flexible? More government control over the production of biotech products. There will be the Centers of Innovation for Advanced Development and Manufacturing where the government -- which not only has no expertise in either but has failed miserably -- will be building and running vaccine production facilities. As for new products, moving from the mistaken idea that all new discoveries come from NIH, " HHS will be creating new teams at the National Institutes of Health to identify promising research and facilitate its translation into vaccines, drugs, and treatments that keep Americans safe."
Once government picks winners and losers it will invest in pet projects through a strategic investment firm and give it $200 million.
Will all this make biologic countermeasure development more nimble and flexible? The government track record in product development is terrible. Worse, there is no acknowledgement of the real barriers to innovation: the failure to apply the same science of discovery to accelerate the evaluation and development of new products overall. The funding for regulatory science pushed by Sebelius misses the mark. It focuses on studying the potenetial of early stage products when in fact the FDA needs more money for later stage evaluation and more efficient ways to monitor production.
The report claims HHS will reposition government as a "strategic partner." The current proposals put the government into the biotech and vaccine business. If you like ObamaCare you will love ObamaShots.
http://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/mcm/enterprisereview/Pages/default.aspx
It already set up a venture capital firm in Dept of Treasury to dole out $1 billiion to small companies to the projects of it's choosing. This, at a time when private VC financing for life sciences is actually up. But no matter, the biotech genuises at Treas. who I am sure have extensive investment and biotech backgrounds, will hand out tax credits that can be used to offset losses or as collateral for other funding. Sound familar?
Now comes the administration's response to their botching of the H1N1 production and distribution effort. By insisting on single doses to avoid the fearmongering of vaccine critics, HHS delayed the roll out of the vaccine by months. The snafu forced a re-examination of the government's role in preparing the nation for both pandemics and bioterrorism. Thus HHS just released " The Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Review" where Secretary Sebelius said “Our nation must have a system that is nimble and flexible enough to produce medical countermeasures quickly in the face of any attack or threat, whether it’s a threat we know about today or a new one,”
It's solutio for becoming nimble and flexible? More government control over the production of biotech products. There will be the Centers of Innovation for Advanced Development and Manufacturing where the government -- which not only has no expertise in either but has failed miserably -- will be building and running vaccine production facilities. As for new products, moving from the mistaken idea that all new discoveries come from NIH, " HHS will be creating new teams at the National Institutes of Health to identify promising research and facilitate its translation into vaccines, drugs, and treatments that keep Americans safe."
Once government picks winners and losers it will invest in pet projects through a strategic investment firm and give it $200 million.
Will all this make biologic countermeasure development more nimble and flexible? The government track record in product development is terrible. Worse, there is no acknowledgement of the real barriers to innovation: the failure to apply the same science of discovery to accelerate the evaluation and development of new products overall. The funding for regulatory science pushed by Sebelius misses the mark. It focuses on studying the potenetial of early stage products when in fact the FDA needs more money for later stage evaluation and more efficient ways to monitor production.
The report claims HHS will reposition government as a "strategic partner." The current proposals put the government into the biotech and vaccine business. If you like ObamaCare you will love ObamaShots.
http://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/mcm/enterprisereview/Pages/default.aspx
