I think you&#x27;re actually supporting the point. The people actually doing the research don&#x27;t care whether they&#x27;re being financed by VCs, or by NIH. As long as they&#x27;re getting the money, they&#x27;re happy.<p>Moreover, if you&#x27;re advocating pushing private investment even farther out, there are undesirable side effects. It means that the decision about what to pursue stops being driven by what there&#x27;s actual demand for, and becomes a matter of political policy.<p>We can already see the effects of this. Government investment in medical research is not proportional to the number of sufferers, or the expected gain in QALYs (Quality-Adjusted Life Years). It&#x27;s clear that the investment is strongly slanted toward research on maladies that have distinct demographics - i.e., that are represented by organized voting blocs. Thus, you&#x27;ll find <i>far</i> more money spent, proportionately, on research for HIV than for something that&#x27;s pretty widely distributed like colon cancer. I believe it&#x27;s wrong for politics to drive this so strongly.