Monday, June 7, 2010 at 12:02AM 
WSJ story.
The list:
To me, that says an aging population, by definition living a lot longer.
Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 12:01AM 
Per all the recent stuff on Venter's breakthrough, a chart from The Economist. More DNA synthesis productivity over time, with the cost declining. Add in the fact that it used to take tremendous lengths of time to catalogue a species but now it happens in days instead of years, costing thousands instead of millions, and you got a ton of breakthrough developments coming down the pike.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 12:04AM 
Abbott buys Piramal Healthcare's generic drugs unit for almost $4B, "the latest in a series of deals by Western drug makers to strengthen their presence in emerging markets including India."
This is good, but it also undercuts Big Pharma's arguments about how there's unsafe drugs in unsafe markets and safe drugs in safe markets and never the two shall meet.
I support this M&A activity because I believe the bottom-of-the-pyramid markets should inform Big Pharma as to how it should be able to deliver drugs a lot more cheaply back home.
And it damn well better do so, because those of us American who buy their prescription drugs via Canadian online drugstores know full well that there's no reason for us to be paying these prices when nobody else in the world--either developed or emerging--seems to.
Abbott's big interest in India is that it's mostly self-pay (70%), as opposed to government-controlled--as in Europe. So Abbott hopes to balance the belt-tightening in the West with the expanding New Core middle class being willing--and able--to spend more on their healthcare.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 12:04AM 
FT full-page "analysis," plus Economist editorial and briefing.
FT first:
The first application for synthetic genomes may be the rapid development of new flu vaccines . . . "If this technology had been available last year, we could have cut the period needed to make a vaccine for H1N1 by 99 percent," says Dr Venter. "We could have done it in a day."
The basic reminder: most life extension is accomplished by defeating everyday disease, not revamping the body. So the benefits of life extension tend to be fairly democratic, meaning everybody gets them--and not just the super-rich.
Venter, as indicated before here, is focused on creating algae that can suck CO2 out of the air and produce hydrocarbons--great stuff that should be happening here in America.
From The Economist:
Is the answer lots of new rules? The better answer is profound openness on developments, so a vote for open-source.
A key glimpse of the future: the falling cost of analyzing DNA sequences and the faster and cheaper DNA synthesis.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 12:04AM 
WSJ piece on how Charles River Laboratories International is buying one of China's largest drug research firms, WuXi AppTec Company for $1.6B.
Charles River is a big US research firm (i.e., drug developer) that works with the Big Pharma producers. Buying WuXi allows Charles River to access a lot of cheaper PhDs in China.
Research costs continue to go up. Meanwhile, one-third of all drug patents in the world will expire during the next few years, so Big Pharma and its partners have little choice but to access China's growing pharmaceutical industry.
I think this is a wave that will benefit the US: exposure to, and integration with, a large but cheaper medical market. We need the infusion of cost discipline and a rethinking of our very expensive methodologies, plus, quite simply, access to cheaper drugs and devices and--as is shown by "medical tourism"--procedures, which China will be pioneering or just redesigning as it seeks to extend more and better care to all its people.
