Help me out here...

This NY Sun lidblower is a bit confusing. Solomont is rather misleading from the jump here. How can it be said that the "vast majority of drug development takes place within the private sector" if one of the co-authors of the study describes government-backed researchers and their counterparts in the private sector as "highly complementary" and with FDA Agent Pitts saying, "it would be hard to say which sector's work was more important."

Also, do the study's authors claim that there is something inherent in the private sector that gives it an advantage in drug development? Or is the advantage simply a result of the private sector's outspending of government funded research?

Update!!: Whoops! It seems we have a serious bias problem here. While trying to track down the actual study, I came across a hardhitting, fact-fucking blog to which Zzwycker is a contributor. Check out this entry from May 1, 2008: Alas, work has piled on, the usual array of office crises has intervened, and the defense of capitalism this year has proven more burdensome than even my rare and finely-honed bemused cynicism envisioned.

The Study!
Zzzzwycker's co-authors are from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, which was founded by a Dr. Louis Lasagna. I'm sure that's an alias.