“Although it is easier to find information these days, it is easier than ever before to find misinformation, pseudo-facts, unsupported and fringe opinions, and the like. Children should be taught at an early age what constitutes evidence, how to detect biases or distortions in newspaper accounts, and that there exist hierarchies of information sources. In the medical field, for example, a controlled experiment published in a peer-reviewed journal is a better source than a blog by the Ginseng Growers Association, promoting the health benefits of their own product.” ShouldChildrenFactsAgeOpinionInformationExampleFieldsTaughtProductsSourceEasierBenefitsEvidenceAccountsMedicalNewspapersExperimentsThese DaysControlledAssociationPeersJournalHierarchyPromotingFringeBlogsDistortionMisinformationPseudoHealth Benefits Author:Daniel Levitin
“At some point, that risk-taking private capital can take over, and have patents and trade secrets and things that let them lead the way, which happened with the steam engine and some other things, although with energy, the time of adoption is a lot longer than it is with, say, IT products or even medical advances, like drugs and vaccines.” WayEnergySecretRiskHappenedProductsDrugTradeMedicalEnginesAdoptionSteamVaccinesPatentsRisk-takingSteam EnginesMedical Advances Author:Bill Gates
“R&D generally has been a bipartisan thing, because in the IT space, in the medical space, the U.S., the benefits to ourselves and the world and our economy have been very, very clear. I'm hopeful we can make a very strong case there. Energy is actually harder; it takes more time to get a product, but if you do it's a very, very big market and the constraints of doing that in a clean way are more obvious all the time.” IfsWorldWayHas BeensBigsEnergyStrongSpaceCasesEconomyClearProductsBenefitsHarderCleanObviousMedicalHopefulMore TimeVery StrongConstraintsBipartisan Author:Bill Gates
“If the Health Impact Fund were to be instituted, a single company would be in charge of a medical product all the way from its conception to the health improvements realized by actual patients. The company would be paid for health impact, and it would have to arrange the entire pipeline in between - all the steps of invention, of clinical testing, of getting marketing approval in many different countries, of wholesalers and retailers and prescriptions and so on - in a holistically optimal way.” IfsWayDifferentCountryWould BeCompanyStepsProductsPaidImpactPatientMarketingMedicalImprovementInventionFundConceptionApprovalTestingPrescriptionsClinicalsDifferent CountriesPipelineOptimalRetailers Author:Thomas Pogge