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10
Jul
2020

The Remdesivir Pricing Letter Gilead Should Have Written

Dear America, We’ve decided to grossly underprice remdesivir. Hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 patients in America, and even more around the world, need our drug. But the US insurance system is corrupt and heartless. It has demonstrated that it will go to great lengths to prevent patients from getting appropriate, physician-prescribed treatments. You know their tricks: high deductibles, high copays,...
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9
Jul
2020

Novavax Nabs $1.6B, BD Secures Fast Antigen Test OK, & a Tribute to Tony Fauci

The United States, it pains me to say as a patriotic believer in our Constitutional system and institutions and generally decent and hardworking people, looks like a disaster zone. A tally of 3.1 million COVID-19 cases, 133,000 deaths, and record numbers of new infections adding up every day can shake one’s faith. Confidence in US institutions, and faith in government...
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6
Jul
2020

Writing in the Language of DNA: Kevin Ness on The Long Run

Today’s guest on The Long Run is Kevin Ness. He’s the CEO of Boulder, CO-based Inscripta. This is a startup that calls itself the “digital genome engineering company.” The aspiration, which Inscripta described in a statement last December, was to create: The world’s first fully automated benchtop instrument for genome-scale engineering. Consisting of an instrument, consumables, software, and assays, it...
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25
Jun
2020

The Exponential Curves Re-Emerge

The curves are telling the story. They were flat for a while. Now they’re heading up the exponential slope again. Texas, Arizona, Florida – and even California, which did so well for so long – are among the couple dozen states that are beginning to look up at those scary curves of new COVID-19 cases. We still have no idea...
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22
Jun
2020

From Heart to Head, Corporations Can Step Up Against Systemic Racism 

The raw, painful emotions emanating from Minneapolis, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by police, have prompted millions of people to stand up in defiance of racism and inequality. The passionate reaction is right, and long overdue. George Floyd was just the latest in a terrible list of victims of police brutality. What’s most important is how activists have...
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11
Jun
2020

AstraZeneca Opens Its Digital Komono

AstraZeneca has emerged with a reputation as one of the industry’s most imaginative pharmas – it was named the “most innovative” global pharma company by IDEA Pharma in November 2019, and was cast as Gallant to GSK’s Goofus in a recent Financial Times piece examining their contrasting trajectories. In this context, I was especially excited when I saw what looked...
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11
Jun
2020

Inconvenient Truths and Rays of Light

The information world that we built sometimes has a way of distracting us. It downplays and marginalizes what’s important. Not this week. Let’s start with a few timely, inconvenient truths. As of this writing on June 11: The US has 113,865 dead from COVID-19 and counting. 2 million+ confirmed cases. 20,000 new cases adding up every day. 21 states are...
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