Alzheimer, one of the dreadful disease.

NYT article

People are afraid of the Alzheimer because it is related to aging, which will happen to all alive human being. Alzheimer is a disease that causes loss of the ability for the everyday activities due to the dysfunctional brain. The fear of losing the ability to maintain everyday life is striking, which lead to abundant funds to research on this disease.

In fact, no practical cure is available at the early stage of this disease. We can only label patients as Alzheimer patients at the early stage at this moment. New standard using biomarks including brain scanning and MRI scanning directs the cost of diagnosing upward. This could amount to financial pressure on the patients without clear helps to improve their lives.

As a scientific matter, if we can collect more data on this disease by imposing more tests to diagnose this disease, it may help developing methods to cure this disease. However, when it creates too much financial pressure on the health care system and patients, it loses the legitimacy since one of the fundamental purpose of health care is helping the sick instead of loading more burden onto them.

Medicine : A meeting point between science and public

Developing a medicine involves efforts related to a variety of scientific fields including chemistry and biology. However, a medicine is going to be used publicly. Therefore, it is not a pure scientific object. We require a medicine to meet an ethical criteria.

In a recent report from NYT, one of major diabetes drugs, Avandia may be conducive to heart attack as a side effect. From the scientific angle, they met the standard. the responsible lab for this drug conducted research on the effects and side effects of this drug and they have known the heart attack risks. After that, they failed to meet the ethical requirement. They tried to cover it up and hide the information from the public.

The people behind developing Avandia would be responsible scientists and practitioners. However, scientific reports on the side effect were ignored by people who are in charge of other criteria. If they understood that their product is not a pure scientific matter but a public matter, they should have put their efforts in driving their scientists toward overcoming side effects instead of covering side effects.

A story from NYT click here

Intel Settlement

Intel is a company based on their cutting edge technology. However, recent researches from EU and FTC revealed that the company is not only based on their technology, but also traditional bad business traits.

In technological method, Intel hindered other company's product from utilizing their processor. Nvidia's Graphic Processor Unit was not able to co-operate with Intel's Central Process Unit, which causes a technological advantage to Intel's own GPU. In addition, Intel rewarded third party companies like Dell as they employ Intel's CPU in their product in order to clout out their much smaller opponent, AMD.

Since Intel is a company, they should pursuit the profit. However, the profit should stem from legal business activites based on their advanced technology that contends their competitors, instead of exploiting thier dominant stand in the market. Due to their unfair trades, they have lost the budget to investigate their technology and created the crisis in fining in many markets in the world.