Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider |The controversy surrounding the $400-million Encode project’s dubious public relations claims surrounding the function of ‘junk DNA’ and the Battelle Institute’s defense of the $3-billion Human Genome Project (HGP) as economically beneficial (as cited in the recent State of the Union address) make this a good time to examine President Obama’s attempts to bring more of American science under centralized direction and control.
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider Guest Column| The scientific method is arguably one of the key pillars of Western Civilization. Ironically, the power of science has become so well established that it is now taken as an article of faith by politicians and voters who wouldn’t know the difference between good science and bad if it bit them in the keister. As a result, no society in history has provided as much public, private, and corporate science funding as the United States.
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | You know scientists are getting desperate when National Cancer Institute (NCI) researchers publicly boast that their approach is not limited to the realm of rational behavior. Heck, as long as funding is infinite, why not keep going back to re-drill the same dry holes hoping dumb luck will produce a gusher?
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Tuesday, October 23, 2012 | BIO IT World | Archives | Advertising | CHI Conferences | Subscribe THIS WEEK IN BIO IT WORLD Clouds, Drugs and Big Data at Bio IT Europe 2012Bio IT World | VIENNA—Scientists shared some important advances in fields from big data and
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Mendels Pod | Bill Frezza, venture capitalist and Bio-IT World guest columnist (The Skeptical Outsider), talks to Mendels Pod about the two presidential candidates.
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Bio-IT World Guest Column | The Skeptical Outsider | Few perks of wealth are more widely demonized than the private jet. Yet these very symbols of power and luxury could save health care dollars by being placed at the disposal of the poor. In what alternate universe is this possible, you ask? In today’s Rube Goldberg U.S. health care market, where else?
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Tuesday, August 14, 2012 | BIO IT World | Archives | Advertising | CHI Conferences | Subscribe THIS WEEK IN BIO IT WORLD How the FDA Stymies Progress and How to Get Around It The Skeptical Outsider | Are cells taken from your body and then returned to it
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Tuesday, March 20, 2012 | BIO IT World | Archives | Advertising | CHI Conferences | Subscribe THIS WEEK IN BIO IT WORLD Kari Stefansson on deCODE's Alzheimer's Discovery, Future Plans Bio IT World | In a detailed interview, deCODE Genetics CEO Kari Stefansson discusses the wide ranging
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012 | BIO IT World | Archives | Advertising | CHI Conferences | Subscribe THIS WEEK IN BIO IT WORLD Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children Selects Ion Proton in Whole Genome Sequencing Push Bio IT World | Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children will feature the Ion
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The Skeptical Outsider GUEST COMMENTARY| Are cells taken from your body and then returned to it “drugs”? They are, according to a recent court ruling that granted the FDA an injunction against the developers of an adult stem cell therapy. And that doesn't sit well with Bill Frezza.
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | Can a new generation of computational biologists cross-trained in the engineering disciplines, rescue the pharmaceutical industry, long overdue for change, asks Bill Frezza in his July 'Skeptical Outsider' column.
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Real Clear Markets | Bill Frezza, a.k.a. author of Bio-IT World's "The Skeptical Outsider" column, pens a scathing dispatch from last week's BIO convention in Boston. "Music, food, and drink abounded, served out of booths with carpets so plush you had to watch your footing. Each was copiously staffed with representatives flown in from around the world busy selling ... well, what? To whom? Using whose money? Toward what end?"
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | Human beings are born pattern recognizers, part of the repertoire of survival skills that separates us from the beasts. We are programmed to spot relationships that we are looking for, sometimes when they're not even there. This occasionally causes us to leap to questionable conclusions that can wreak all sorts of havoc.
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, what is power used to prevent knowledge from eliminating ignorance? I don’t know; ask the FDA.
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | It's not a crisis. Yet. Bigger health care issues loom. Right now. There are still fortunes to be made. While it lasts. But one could hardly ask for a more interesting case study on the collision of medicine, economics, and democracy than the explosive growth of so-called orphan drugs. These are drugs designed to extract extraordinary amounts of other people's money serving the needs of tiny, desperate patient populations.
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | Risk aversion is the inherent enemy of progress. In a free society we can each seek our own balance, accepting the consequences. But when entrenched interests are allowed to thwart attempts by innovators and entrepreneurs to challenge the status quo, we all pay the price. As America slides into malaise and decline, nowhere is this more evident than in our passive acceptance of the absolute power of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—even in the face of certain death. It need not be so.
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By Bill Frezza November 15, 2011 | The Skeptical Outsider | Risk aversion is the inherent enemy of progress. In a free society we can each seek our own balance, accepting the consequences. But when entrenched interests are allowed to
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Bio-IT World | In the previous issue of Bio•IT World, my fellow columnist Ernie Bush posed the question, what are the limits to collaboration among pharmaceutical companies? This same question was faced by the telecommunications industry in 1913, albeit during an era of ascendancy and not senescence. This led to a solution that lasted 70 years. Could history repeat itself?
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By Bill Frezza September 27, 2011 | The Skeptical Outsider | In the previous issue of Bio•IT World (July August 2011), my fellow columnist Ernie Bush posed the question, what are the limits to collaboration among pharmaceutical companies? This same
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Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | "Tell me how someone is compensated and I’ll tell you how they’ll behave,” goes the old adage. If non-monetary rewards are considered alongside financial remuneration this pretty much describes why federally funded research in the life sciences is producing less and less bang for more and more bucks. And why the scientific literature is at risk of becoming polluted with overreaching claims, obfuscated shortcomings, and non-reproducible results.
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