Darwin Grove And Biotechs Future

The dodo famously was unable to adapt to changes in the environment of its home on Mauritius in the 17th century. Result: no more dodos.

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Recently, I had coffee with former Intel chief executive Andy Grove moments after he had admonished a room full of scientists about being too good at what they do.

"They are so caught up in doing the best science that they are failing to translate that science into anything useful," he said, his Hungarian-lilted voice rising and blue eyes intense.

"When we set out to develop the microchip," he had just told a packed room at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego, "we did not try to make the best chip, but one that worked for as little cost as possible." If one chip idea didn't work, he said, they tossed it and built a better one, learning from their mistakes.

Grove, who is 71 and has Parkinson's disease, suggested that bio-scientists should follow the same example. He called for a "cultural revolution" that rewards curiosity, risk-taking, and lessons learned from failure.

Currently, he said, the culture rewards work that pleases reviewers, takes few risks, and retains an Ivory Tower mentality that puts elegant science above finding speedy treatments that work.

During the follow-up question-and-answer session, someone in the audience gave the obvious retort to Grove: That drugs and medical devices are not microchips. They have to work in humans, with no margin for error.

Yet Grove has a point, if for no other reason than that something is seriously amiss when the number of drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration each year is going down at the same time the money research and development spending is going up.

Combined spending on R&D at the National Institutes of Health and in the pharmaceutical industry has tripled in 20 years. In 2007, the Food and Drug Administration will approve fewer than 20 new drugs, less than half the number per year just a decade ago.

At the same time, science has produced a raft of pure research discoveries that boggle the mind. From learning how cancer forms to developing a recipe for transforming skin cells into embryonic stem cells capable of growing into any organ or cell in the body.

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