>This is an area of failure for the NIH, imo. They need to work in a mechanism where the government shares in the return on investment. <
I agree with you 100 percent on this point. People seem to forget that after the failure of Avastin in breast cancer it was the NIH that conducted the trials in Colorectal cancer. Where would Genentech have been if the NIH would have given up on it also?
Executives at DNA benefited enormously, but the only US taxpayers that benefited were the ones with cancer that got to live an extra couple of months.