powdermonkey

The Secret History of Silicon Valley is the Military

really great video about electronic warfare, military and silicon Valley

The Secret History of Silicon Valley

from Google engEDU talks
peaker: Steve Blank
Steve Blank spent nearly 30 years as founder and executive of high
tech companies in Silicon Valley.

a must see

Defense BarCamp, Aug 8-9

we're putting on a defense barcamp if you're interested Aug 8,9 in Crystal City, VA

wiki:
http://barcamp.org/BarCampMil (Please RSVP)
Google group:
http://groups/google.com/group/barcampmil

Ground rules:
- Demo tech that is focused around the Defense, IC, Gov and humanitarian domains, just needs to have a gov tie-in
- only show stuff you are happy with 'getting out' there
- in general the proclivity is toward open source software, but not a requirement

OSS: NetEpi

very cool: NetEpt

Free, open source, network-enabled tools for epidemiology and public health practice

Public health is an area of endeavour concerned with protecting and improving the health of sub-groups of the population (or the entire population), rather than with the care of individual patients.

Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations, and serves as the foundation of almost all public health health practice.

NetEpi, which is short for "InterNet-enabled Epidemiology", is a collaborative project to create a suite of free, open source software tools for epidemiology and public health practice which make full use of the Internet. Anyone with an interest in population health epidemiology or public health informatics is encouraged to examine the current suite of tools and to contribute to their further development. Contributions which involve formal and/or informal testing of the tools in a wide range of circumstances and environments are particularly welcome, as are offers of assistance with design, programming and documentation tasks. We are also happy to talk to potential sponsors of the NetEpi projects.

Biowar for Dummies

the tech will get out there...
Biowar for Dummies:  How hard is it to build your own weapon of mass destruction?  We take a crash course in supervirus engineering to find out.

Anthrax. Smallpox. Ebola. For thriller  writers and policy crusaders, biological warfare was a standard what-if scenario long before anyone mailed anthrax to government and media offices in 2001. Pentagon war games like Dark Winter, held just before 9/11, and this year’s Atlantic Storm suggested that terrorists could unleash germs with the killing power of a nuclear weapon.

 

Scientists, though, have always been skeptical. Only massive, state-sponsored  programs—not terrorist cells or lone kooks—pose a plausible threat, they say. As the head of the Federation of American Scientists working group on bioweapons put it in a 2002 Los Angeles Times op-ed: “A significant bioterror attack today would require the support of a national program to succeed.”

WSJ Series: Drug Markets and Unitended Consequences

The WSJ has run a couple of great articles describing the unintended consequences of changing the rules in the drug market. In 1983 Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act to encourage companies to do R/D into rare illnesses that impact small groups of people (from what I can gather <200,000 people).

The carrot is: "For seven years, it gives a company, in effect, the same market protection that a patent does, without requiring the company to go through the lengthy process of getting a patent. (A patent for a scientific discovery is good for 20 years from filing, but typically there are about 10 years remaining on it by the time it results in an approved drug.) Unlike a patent, which is granted for a new discovery, orphan-drug status can be given to a drug that has been on the market in the U.S. for other diseases or used in other countries for years." How Rare Drugs Became a Lifeline for Drug Companies.
Another article describing in detail a patients life: A Biotech Drug Extends Life, But at What Cost?

End result is that Drug companies can charge what ever they like (in one case average of $600k) to recoup their investment, profit and fund new research. The unintended consequence is that now since drug companies can get easier market protection for a drug and huge profits, they are spending more money and time looking for the blockbuster orphan drug that will make them larger profits. they are also attracting venture money. And of course they are finding loopholes to hold onto the monopoly.

Just goes to show, the government needs to be careful in deciding to change the rules in an established marketplace. Blowback can occur. Just like in the vaccine market in a previous post: http://powdermonkey.blogs.com/powdermonkey/2005/11/wsj_editorial_o.html

WSJ: Editorial on Flu Vaccines

Not sure how true this editorial is Political Vaccine, but item caught my eye:

"The feds have also done their best to remove any financial incentive -- i.e., profit -- for developing new vaccines. The Vaccines For Children program [] has been especially destructive. The program now buys more than 50% of all private vaccines, and it uses this monopoly clout to drive prices down to commodity levels.

When one pharmaceutical company offered to sell a new pneumococcal vaccine to the government for $58 a dose, the Centers for Disease Control demanded a $10-a-dose discount. Politicians want companies to take all the risk of developing new vaccines, but they don't want the companies to make any money from taking those risks. Then the politicians profess surprise and dismay that there's a vaccine shortage."

If true, very sad, vaccines are needed, they cost money and company want a return on their investment. Otherwise we end up with not enough flu vaccine (see Washington Post article Clinics Delay Flu Shots as Deliveries Lag) among other things.

Article: Katrina Imagery Warehouse: The Inside Story

Good article about the underground/backroom Katrina response on the Federal level. Basically a distributed group of folks around the country putting together all the imagery that was eventually shared with Google and Nasa. Link: Katrina, the Inside Story - all using open source software tools as well.

Body Monitoring

Very interesting company, BodyMedia. They build monitoring devices for the body. Pretty cool, now if someone could just hack my Shuffle to it...

Del.icio.us Tags: body monitoring technology wearable