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This morning, while doing my usual Twitter review, I came across a tweet from the Scientist.com about John McCain’s recent anti-science Twitter rants.  Based on his tweets (and snarky comments) he considers the following projects blatant examples of pork barrel spending:

"$209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in GA"

"$819, 000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama"

"$900,000 for fish management - how does one manage a fish"

Older McCain tweets include:

"$1,427,250 for genetic improvements of switchgrass - I thought switchgrass genes were pretty good already, guess I was wrong."

"$250,000 to enhance research on Ice Seal populations"

"$2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York - quick peel me a grape."

"$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi"

McCain’s tweets underscore how little politicians—especially republicans(what do you expect from a party that endorses intelligent design over evolution) —understand about how science works. That said, some of the proposed projects cited by McCain may require additional scrutiny (by science experts not him) and may turn out to be projects that don't warrant funding.  Nevertheless,I believe that McCain's tweets are part of a well crafted Republican-led initiative intended to publicly discredit  these earmarked projects so that he and other Republican's can redirect public monies to their own pork barrel initiatives. Shame on McCain and his cronies for attempting to hijack Twitter to discredit worthy scientific, environmental,agricultural and conservation projects. 

Let’s try to disrupt McCain’s plan by tweeting that he is anti-science! 

Tweet away peeps!

Hat tip to the The Scientist!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Twittering!

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Did you know that the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world spent close to $50 billion dollars last year on R&D? That sum could be used to purchase the entire US biotechnology industry except for the five largest companies—Genentech, Amgen, Gilead Genzyme and Celgene. Further, pharma’s R&D budget is about 4 times the R&D budget of all of the US biotechnology companies combined. According to a blurb in breakingviews.com, Pfizer alone spent $8 billion last year which was greater than the sum spent by biotech’s top five companies. What this tells us is that pharmaceutical companies are grossly unproductive when it comes to drug discovery and development. This would explain why nearly three-quarters of all new medicines approved for sale in the US last year originated at biotechnology companies.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that biotechnology companies are much more efficient at R&D than pharmaceutical companies. More importantly this suggests that something must change so that pharma can continue receive adequate ROI on internal discovery programs. Perhaps big pharma ought to spend a greater portion of its R&D budget on biotech mergers and acquisitions rather than continuing to invest in inefficient and failing internal R&D programs. While biotechnologynology companies are exceptional in drug discovery, they are severely lacking when it comes to clinical development of new drugs. This is largely due the high costs of conducting human clinical trials (which are required for regulatory approval of all new medicines). Most biotechnology companies are strapped for cash and don’t have sufficient funds to conduct clinical trials on their own.

Not surprisingly, given the recent financial downturn, there has been a recent spate of deals in which pharma has been willing to pay large sums of money for clinical development rights to promising new biotechnology drugs. Moreover, a majority of the almost 160,000 employees layed off by pharma companies in the past few years have been R&D scientists. This suggests that pharma is beginning to realize that its money may be better spent doing deals or buying biotech companies rather than continuing to invest large sums of money into it’s own unproductive R&D programs. Unfortunately, this paradigm shift doesn’t bode well for doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows who are training in the life sciences. This is because many entry-level biotech positions, traditionally filled by newly-minted PhDs and postdoctoral fellows will likely be filled by experienced, pharmaceutical employees who lost their jobs in the recent rounds of layoffs. As much as I hate to say this, if I were a life sciences graduate student or postdoctoral fellow considering an R&D career in industry, I would begin to explore alternative career options.

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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