DailyDirt: Better Medicine
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Modern medicine has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go -- especially when it comes to figuring out whether or not drugs are even doing better than a placebo. Categorizing and quantifying the development of drugs in a more public way could speed up the progress of new treatments, so it's nice to see some folks getting around to doing just that. Here are some links about drugs and a relatively new way to diagnose brain disorders.- The Pillbox project is organizing a huge database of various drugs and their interactions. This probably duplicates databases from pharmacies like Walmart/Walgreens, but the data will be public. [url]
- With near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), psychiatric diagnoses might be more accurately determined. Or at least, these brain scans will create a database of brain patterns to help categorize various mental conditions. [url]
- The contribution of public-sector research institutions (PSRIs) for developing FDA-approved drugs and vaccines has been quantified. "Virtually all the important, innovative vaccines that have been introduced during the past 25 years have been created by PSRIs." [url]
- LSD has a pretty interesting history. Derivatives of the drug could have a more interesting future, too. [url]
- To discover more biotech stuff, check out what's roaming around in the StumbleUpon jungle. [url]
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Filed Under: drugs, lsd, near-infrared spectroscopy, pillbox, public-sector research institutions
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Sweet! Now I won't need to experiment anymore. Hmmm... what "side affects" am I looking for?
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But without patents awarded the private sector corporations, the public won't fund any R&D.
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Re:
1.2 billion people suing them out of the market.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/02/14/china.intellectual.property/index.html?hpt=C2
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I have been scratching my head for weeks now trying to remember what it was called.
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http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/bayh.html
So instead of encouraging businesses to conduct R&D, our system merely encourages them to waste money on lawyers. and they consider this a good thing. Someone needs to submit to Obama that this is not how innovation works.
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Phrenology Returns!
Er, no. There are some conditions where this might make sense, because they are associated with localized damage (for example epilepsy), but in general it's no more than a crude indication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
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Re: Phrenology Returns!
[citation needed?]
As with most brain studies, the discovery of localized brain damage seems to be where progress starts, so the potential of this technique could be significantly more valuable than phrenology... It could also be about as useful as a "brain fingerprint" -- but hopefully the scientific method will determine that shortly.
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The Forbidden Medicine
No doubt this thing has a patent pending...
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/freakonomics-radio-waiter-theres-a-phys icist-in-my-soup-part-i/
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