Posted by Al Gordon on November 30, 1997 at 20:53:17:
In Reply to: Re: CYGNUS TEST RESULTS, ehem? excuse me? posted by Alan F. Bachrach, M.D. on November 30, 1997 at 19:50:23:
Alan, a continuous glucose monitor IS - repeat *IS* - being funded with very big dollars. Cygnus is raising $75 million as you can see from their press release. Biocontrol Technology has sunk many tens of millions of dollars into their monitor. Now NASA is pursuing the same goal. You can be sure that all the suppliers of finger-prick monitors are also developing continuous meters to defend their billion-dollar markets.
Please understand that there is a huge fund of dollars for anything that can generate a lifetime annuity for the supplier, such as these meters. A cure, on the other hand, will not represent such an annuity, and in fact will destroy several existing annuities (insulin, injectors, test strips, complications drugs, etc).
Your proposal that governments and foundations add to this funding will not hasten the day when we have a continuous meter by one minute. We will have such a device just as soon as a viable technology is found, and incremental funding from JDF will not make one iota of difference. What JDF funding of such devices WILL do is to delay the advent of a cure.
Of course, the companies developing such devices would love to get charitable funding, for 2 reasons. First, it is "free money" and increases the shareholders' return on equity. And second, it dilutes JDF's ability to fund cure research that, if successful, will damage the market for such devices.
Let's put our scarce funds into areas that otherwise are not getting private funds, and leave the private sector to develop the next great diabetes annuity for shareholders.
Al