newspaper La Vanguardia published on its back on July 27, 2007 a very interesting interview with Richard J. Roberts. This man proved to be worthy of a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1993, shared with Philip A. Sharp, for his work on introns, fragments of DNA that contain genetic information, describing such information was prepared in the genes of installments. Come on, all a scientist in a position, not like those kind people objectionable Foucault, Szasz and Laing, to name a few ...
We have found very interesting opinions in that interview (obviously, we found interesting because they coincide with ours, for what we deceive), and we want to collect them here. We are aware that the fact did not receive the Nobel Prize makes you the Mahatma Gandhi or the Oracle of Delphi (without going any further, our beloved Dr. House and left word that Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite, and he did not want blood on his award), but certain circles that are not exactly ours, is highly valued prestige authoring, respected scientist, published in journals of high impact, etc.. And in these circles, a Nobel Prize is the most you can aspire to.
Let's hear, then, the opinon of Dr. Roberts, Nobel Prize in Medicine:
- Does the research can be planned?
- If I were Minister of Science, would seek enthusiastic people with interesting projects, just give them money so they could not do more than investigate and let them work ten years to surprise us.
- seems a good policy.
- It is generally believed that to go very far, you have to support basic research, but if you want more immediate results and profitable, you must bet on the applied ...
- Is not it?
- often more profitable discoveries have been made from very basic questions. Thus was born the giant biotech billionaire U.S. industry I work.
- How were you born?
- Biotechnology arose when passionate people started to wonder if I could clone genes and began to study them and try to purify them.
- Quite an adventure.
- Yes, but nobody expected to get rich with these questions. It was difficult to get funding to research the answers until Nixon launched the war against cancer in 1971.
- Was scientifically productive?
- allowed, with an enormous amount of public funds, much research, like mine, that did not work directly against the cancer, but was useful for understanding the mechanisms that allow life.
- What did you discover?
- Phillip Allen Sharp and I were rewarded by the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene splicing (gene splicing).
- What helped?
- That discovery led to understand how DNA works, however, has only an indirect link with cancer.
- Which model seems more effective research, American or European?
- It is obvious that the U.S., which is active private capital is much more efficient. Take for example the spectacular progress of the computer industry, where private money that finances basic and applied research, but for the health industry ... I have my reservations.
- I'm listening.
- Research on human health can not depend only on its profitability. What's good for the corporate dividends is not always good for people.
- Explain.
- The pharmaceutical industry wants to serve the capital markets ...
- Like any other industry.
- It's just not any other industry, we are talking about our health and our lives and our children and millions of human beings.
- But if they are profitable, investigate better.
- If you only think of the benefits, you stop worrying about serving people.
- For example ...
- I checked and in some cases dependent on private funds researchers have discovered a very effective medicine that would completely eliminate a disease ...
- Why stop researching?
- Why the drug companies often are not as interested in you and heal you in getting money, so that research, suddenly, is diverted to the discovery of drugs that do not heal completely, but chronified the disease and make you experience an improvement that disappears when you stop taking the drug.
- is a serious accusation.
- As it is common for pharmaceutical companies interested in research lines not to cure but only to more chronic illnesses with chronic, more profitable drugs that they cure at all and once and forever. And not just follow the financial analysis of the pharmaceutical industry and verify I say.
- There dividends that kill.
- So you say that health can not be a market can not be understood merely as a means of earning money. And I think that the European model of mixed private and public capital is less likely that encourages such abuses.
- An example of such abuse?
- have failed to investigate antibiotics because they are too effective and completely cured. As no new antibiotics have been developed, infectious microorganisms and today have become resistant tuberculosis, which in my childhood had been defeated, is resurgent and has killed this past year a million people.
- Are not you talking about the Third World?
- This is another sad chapter investigates only Third World diseases, because the drugs that would fight unprofitable. But I'm talking about our First World: the medicine that heals the whole is not profitable and therefore do not investigate it.
- politicians do not intervene?
- Do not get your hopes up: in our system, politicians are mere employees of big money, invest what is necessary to elect their kids go, and if you go out, buy from those who are elected.
- In all there.
- The capital is only interested multiply. Almost all politicians - and I know what I mean, depend shamelessly these multinational pharmaceutical companies that fund their campaigns. The rest are words ...
The interview was conducted by Lluís Amiguet , and left us impressed. Not the message itself, which surprised us a little, but clearly it is exposed and by whom it exposes. Richard J. Roberts, given his biography and work, you may be accused of many things, but hard to go against the advancement of research or science.
We, on the contrary, recently, we were again accused of going against drugs and pharmacology research, when we thought we made clear our position on this issue in a previous input. Say no There are none so deaf that he does not want to hear ...
To finish the interview and after all a Nobel Prize, we are left with few words spoken by one participant at a recent conference in Nicosia Radio that presented himself as " patient with bipolar disorder." At a time when the subject had left the pharmaceutical industry and its economic power, said (quoted from memory) the ability to "take advantage" of money from these companies to organize various training and / or other associations. The comment, said with total seriousness, was devastating:
That money is tainted. We do not want.
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