Awesome. The main problem with drug research was that scientists end up being, many times, corporate workhorses. Something like this may actually liberate researchers so that we can have scientists benefit from ownership of patents (not assuming that’s how this will work…) and oversight of research by the people (as taxpayers are the one providing the R&D funding).
We’ll see…but this is an interesting and cool development. As to the critique about “drugs don’t solve all our health issues” – well, I agree that there’s a “Big Pharma” rhetoric, but this doesn’t advance a mythology necessarily. Drugs to work…naturally occurring medicinal herbs also do the same. But the idea that this is mutually exclusive from cataloguing research is a false dichotomy. We can fund both – and that’s more jobs for the educated sector.