(From MSNBC). $100 billion a year may seem like a lot of money for medical research, but it's a drop in the bucket of medical expenditures in general - and the present regulatory environment ensures that a great deal of that money is wasted on needless hoop-jumping exercises. "The imbalance between late-stage and early-stage research is growing, the authors wrote, and is due partly to lengthy clinical trials required for new drug approval and partly to pure marketing. Companies often run costly studies to show their drugs work better than competitors' drugs." Which is disingenuous - companies are forced to run ever more costly and unnecessary studies by risk-averse and unaccountable government regulatory bodies. The best way to reduce the cost of medicine is to remove government regulation, thereby increasing the economic reward for greater research funding, and allowing that research funding to achieve results more effectively.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9407342/