How much the (OECD) world invests in R&D

It’s in this nice graph, from the latest edition of Nature. Sad to see Italy lagging behind, I did not expect the 4% that Sweden pulls but at least 2%, come on!!!

The latest analysis from the US National Science Board confirms that Israel leads the world in its economic devotion to research and development (R&D).
Its civilian R&D spending in 2005 accounted for 4.71% of gross domestic product (GDP), more than twice the average among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Although US R&D investment was the world’s largest ( $340 billion ) and in 2004, it was more than that of the rest of the G7 nations combined, the report offers some evidence of a slight decline in its standing.
Its 2.57% share of GDP is comfortably above the OECD average of 2.25%, but both South Korea and Switzerland have leapfrogged ahead of the United States by this measure since the board’s previous report in 2006.
Germany could now be poised to do the same.
Most countries are investing more in R&D than they were, says Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation, which published the report.
For example, although China ranks 23rd in GDP share ( just 1.34% ) it has pulled ahead to third in total R&D investment with an estimated $115 billion in 2005.

I am most surprised at the incredible figure for Israel expenditure: almost 5% of the GDP in R&D. and I thought they had to spend all of their GDP in weapons to keep their many enemies at bay…

Toyota Tundra – helping to make it the real thing

Toyota, which prides itself as the greenest car maker in the planet, launched its new HUGE Tundra pickup. Funny name, since thanks to the fact that Toyota, together with the Detroit block, is lobbying the US government not to impose too strict limits on car consumptions, the permafrost once common in the places the thing takes its name from will most likely melt away. Duh!!!

I guess they’ll call the next model the Swamp… or something…

Finally, house prices start to fall…

The bane of every young couple, their ability to buy a house to live in without wasting money on the monthly rent, has been getting worse and worse for the past years everywhere in Europe. Luckily, things are starting to change, with a contraction of prices close to 2% in most European states. If it continues that way, may be in a couple of years’ time I’ll start considering buying one – by that time hopefully we (marie and me)should be more financially stable and able to take advantage of an eventual free fall of prices.

A hurdle on the road to personalised cancer treatment

The new Nature is out, (since a couple of days, in fact) with a nice piece on the difficulties facing the development and approval of biomarkers-based cancer diagnostic assays.

Quickly, they work by taking a broad look at the proteins (or RNA, or else) expressed in your body at the moment, and compare them with similar sample in healthy and sick people. if the fingerprints (protein prints, or RNA-prints, or else-prints) match, then there’s a good chance that you may share the same medical condition.

Trouble is, these tests do not yet seem able to differentiate between different kind of cancer enough to be useful in suggesting a treatment. To do so, large, long, expensive clinical trials are necessary. And the companies that produce those diagnostics do not have that kind of money. Pharmaceutical companies do, and they also have some interest in this: with clear diagnoses and treatment indication,s their drugs could be given only to patients likely to responds. Of course, this means that they would sell more or less drugs than they currently do. It can go both ways.

However, there are good chances. If it is true that the UK government will soon require certainty of effect on drugs before re-imbursing them to the company, then such a test would act as a shield in those cases where the drug were not to work nonetheless. I guess a middle ground will have to be found, with the government accepting a certain rate of failure in the prediction of the treatment and therefore shouldering the price of ineffective drugs rather than unloading it onto an already unstable pharmaceutical complex. Whether you like them (us) or not, the world needs new medicine and that’s the most efficient way to create them.

Neglected Diseases

The new Nature is out. I’ve stolen the time to my paper-writing to read the brief news, if not the real papers, but really can’t discuss them right now. Too damn busy…

Draft is due tomorrow and I am still adding data to the discussion and introductory session!!! Bad bad practice.

Anyway, nature you have to pay for, but you can get the Neglected Disease report for free. So, go and check it out.

And I’d believe it too!

I mean, I would believe it if the guy in black were to specify that the Space God was nothing less than the “Flying Spaghetti Monster”

Of course, the two turtles were hurled down, slammed together, their feet jammed, and voila`, here’s planet Earth! Spherical as observed experimentally.

if (prenatal_diagnose == down) then abort()

as described on the NY Times, almost 90% of unborn children diagnosed as having down syndrome are subsequently aborted by the parents. This seemingly puts at risk the remaining down, as their dwindling numbers will mean decreased visibility, therefore less money spent on support programs and such. May be, though, we’ll have more money for those few children who are born with the condition? which one is the right choice, in your view?

I am internally fighting over this. Quite frankly, I don’t think I have the balls to raise such a child. We discussed this over a couple of times with my GF and I’d rather abort. She would rather not – on the other side, she said she would not force me to be parent this way. So, my personale choice is quite clear. I’d rather have a healthy children, than a down one. However, I see the point in the agenda of the already born down’s parents. Less down children will mean less visibility, therefore less money going toward research programs. Support program will continue to exist, yes, but research is a different thing. A drug needs a minimum investment to be made, and if the market is lower, the rice will be higher. same can be said for new techniques and such. therefore, a decrease of 90% in the newborn downs strongly puts to risk the improvement of thos who already are there, who will get no more new treatment as their numbers do not justify the expense any longer. I am surprised by the high percentage too. 350000 in the whole of US means almost one every thousand people is down. That’s a lot more down I use to see. May be in Italy they are kept away from the view?

Anyway, lots of food for my mind. and yours.

Featured in the (bad) press

Uh Oh, The NY Times has a very nasty piece on the American branch of J&J and AM GEN who’ve apparently been paying (a lot) doctors to prescribe their anti-anemia treatments (EPO, a.k for its role in cycling doping).

Here’s how the trick works.

Doctors buy from the company 9M US$ worth of drug. They prescribe it to the patients. Insurance or Medicare pays (let’s say) 10M US$, to cover the drug’s and all other costs. The company who sold the drug, though, send the doctors a rebates worth 2.7 M US$. Profit!!!

Frankly, I am disgusted of these practices, especially knowing that the company I work for (one of the two) prizes itself so much over his own credo. Now, I know this kind of practices are legal in the US, still this does not make them morally acceptable. Bleagh.

It’s hot up there…

It’s been two, no three weeks without rain, a very unusual thing for spring, here in belgium. It’s so dry, that I need to water my rucola, and it’s so sunny that it’s growing large, and bitter like hell. So, I have been sitting in my GF’s garden, basking in the sun and eating a nice mediterranean salad.
Yet, something feel wrong, with this weather. A friend told me that the Azorres’ anticyclon, tha high pressure area which usually hovers over the mediterranean, has moved up north, while the souht of europe is blessed by sub-tropical rains. I don’t know if this is true, but it certainly is worrying, and I believe I am not the only one worried. not that I see many people tearing apart their clothes and stopping using their cars, yet. Well, tearing apart their clothes yes, but only to sun-bake themselves to death. The average belgian has now a color which makes them look a bit more of an arab, and a bit more of melanoma too, in the near future.

And there you are, the NY TImes as usual reports that the artic sea ice cap is melting faster than previously thought. Woah! Here’s the link. And here’s some text:

Climate scientists may have significantly underestimated the power of global warming from human-generated heat-trapping gases to shrink the cap of sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean, according to a new study of polar trends.

The intergovernmental panel concluded that if emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide were not significantly reduced, the region could end up bereft of floating ice in summers sometime between 2050 and the early decades of the next century.

For the new study, Dr. Stroeve and others at the ice center reviewed nearly six decades of measurements by ships, airplanes and satellites estimating the maximum and minimum area of Arctic sea ice, which typically expands most in March and shrinks most in September.

Dr. Stroeve’s team found that since 1953 the area of sea ice in September has declined at an average rate of 7.8 percent per decade. Computer climate simulations of the same period had an average rate of ice loss of 2.5 percent per decade.

Yes, its just computer simulations, some may say. No! the opposite! computer suimulations were optimistic, and showed less ice loss than observed. I wish I had used my bike this morning to come here (although it would have taken the best part of the day to cycle a hundred km)

Finally, the End is Near for Pharma Reps

The NY Times reports on the malsane (for me) habit of big and small pharma to give away free samples to doctors. These samples are then passed to patients, often against suggested first line treatments. now, that’s bad. It’s also bad that pharma reps invite out for expensive dinner/lunches
doctors, with the pretext of talking them about the latest drug from their companies. I don’t say this because my lady is a doctor and I am jaealous of the pharma shills knocking at her door. Well, that doesn’t make them wellcome to me, for sure. I am an italian boy, after all. What really pisses me off is seeing all that money being spent in marketing ploys of doubtful effect on doctors. Money which the patients end up paying, at the end, with higher medicines costs, and therefore higher taxes. It’s a lose-lose situation, excluded may be for pharma shills which, after all, have to eke out a living (and were more interested in driving a powerful free car than in doing actual science – stab!).

In the great scheme of things, probably, free samples do the least arm, I would say. As a child of a poor family, I have often been treated with free sample coming from my family doctor’s cabinet. And, I am also OK with big pharma paying out conferences to doctors (and scientist, although the numbers involved aren’t nearly the same – even as orders of magnitude) – but is it really necessary to run every single shitty medical conference at the Sheraton or Plaza? Isn’t it enough to talk in the auditorium of some University, equally well equipped and certainly less expensive? I can’t tell for sure, but hey, here’s my two cents. If that is, doctors really are interested in hearing about the latest treatment, and not merely in getting a free paid holiday in a luxury hotel, all in.