Repairing the Bayh-Dole Act: A Proposal for Restoring Non-Profit Access to University Science
Aaron Miller The United States government invests billions of dollars every year in scientific research. Government agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA and the Pentagon directly employ legions of scientists and engineers. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds a tremendous amount of biomedical research. Besides running its own labs, the NIH gives generous grants to hundreds of universities and medical schools, and to the thousands of research professors who fill them. The federal government today provides about 60% of the total research funding for America’s many prestigious research universities. In addition, the government pays private, for-profit contractors...