Snap Observations: Labor-HHS Veto, One Laptop Per Child, Rewarding Drug Development, “Right to Dry”

President Bush vetoed the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which would have increased funding for the National Institutes of Health from $29 billion to $30 billion. The legislation would also open new doors for access to scientific research open-access scientific publishing, as it “included a provision requiring NIH-funded researchers to post the full text of their research papers on the National Library of Medicine’s publicly accessible PubMed Central website within a year of publication.”

Production of the One Laptop Per Child computers began in China this week. The first machines will ship to students in Uruguay, Peru, and Mongolia.

Reward drug development with cash prizes, not patents. A proposal for the federal government to lower drug costs by offering prizes for medical research.

Sixty million Americans live in places where laundry clotheslines are banned, but activists concerned about saving energy by avoiding electric dryers are fighting for their “right to dry” (NPR audio).

Google hit a bump in the road on its quest to acquire online advertising company DoubleClick: the European Commission did not approve the deal on account of antitrust concerns and has ordered a review. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is still reviewing the aquisition.

Nobel Laureate Al Gore is now a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the largest and most well-known venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, where he will focus on researching investments in alternative energy start-ups.

Tags: biotech, civil rights, funding, NIH

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