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New Hampshire
(Opinion) Biden administration proposal would harm New Hampshire researchers and patients – NH Business Review
New plan could prevent university medical discoveries from making it out of the lab
The National Institutes of Health awarded over $157 million in research grants to Dartmouth, the University of New Hampshire, and other institutions across the state last year. This funding, and similar grants from other federal agencies, help researchers make groundbreaking discoveries across a host of sectors, from life sciences and agriculture to computing and energy.
Yet a new proposal from the Biden administration could prevent the most exciting university discoveries from making it out of the lab.
The plan would give federal officials unprecedented power to interfere in the contracts signed between academic research institutions and private companies. That’d discourage companies from licensing the discoveries made by these institutions, and thereby prevent firms from turning universities’ good ideas into tangible products.
The proposal dramatically reinterprets the government’s “march-in” rights under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.
Most Americans have likely never heard of that bipartisan law, which has fueled our country’s medical and technological innovation for four decades. The Bayh-Dole Act allowed universities, other research institutions and small businesses to retain the patent rights on discoveries they made with the help of federal grants.
These institutions could then license those patents to private companies willing to take on the risk of developing real-life products.
Before Congress passed that law, the government took the patent rights on discoveries stemming from federally funded research. And because the government rarely licensed those patents, few companies worked to commercialize theoretical breakthroughs into products. Without secure patent rights, they had no incentive to, as they had no way to stop competitors from piggybacking on their work and undercutting them in the marketplace.
Put another way, taxpayers’ research dollars were advancing our collective understanding of science, but we had few tangible advances to show for it.
Bayh-Dole changed that by incentivizing universities to partner with companies to bring those discoveries to market. Since 1980, the patent licensing — and subsequent research, development and manufacturing — enabled by the Bayh-Dole Act has directly contributed $1 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product and supported 6.5 million jobs. The law has been especially impactful in life sciences, leading to the development of more than 200 vaccines and life-saving drugs.
One notable example of these drugs is infliximab, which originated from research at New York University School of Medicine and was later licensed and commercialized by Janssen Biotech, now part of Johnson & Johnson, in 1998. The medicine is commonly used to treat certain forms of arthritis, which affects roughly 280,000 New Hampshire residents and one in four U.S. adults nationwide.
If the Biden administration’s proposal were in place in the 1990s, this medicine might not have made it to patients, as companies would have had very little reason to risk capital on federally funded research. Why spend billions of dollars, and more than a decade, bringing a new technology to market if the government can simply snatch the patent rights as soon as it reaches the shelves?
That is, effectively, what the new plan envisions. Drugs and other technologies would once again never make it out of university laboratories, and American patients would be at the brunt of the medical drought.
New treatments for arthritis and other diseases are just around the corner. But no matter how promising the science, those prospective treatments will never reach patients if the administration gets its way.
Julia Moore is executive director of Rhode Island and Northern New England for the Arthritis Foundation.
New Hampshire
Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters
As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran overtakes the foreign policy debate in Washington, two Democratic governors with potential 2028 presidential aspirations — Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear — recently traveled to New Hampshire, introducing themselves to the state’s famously engaged voters. The two weighed in on the war and both criticized and questioned President Trump’s strategy and endgame.
“If a president is going to take a country into war, and risk the lives of American troops and Americans in the region, he has to have a real justification and not one that seems to change every five to 10 hours,” Beshear told CBS News after a Democratic fundraiser in Keene.
“This President seems to use force before ever trying diplomacy, and he has a duty to sell it to the American people and to address Congress with it,” Beshear continued. “He hasn’t done any of that. In fact, it appears there isn’t even a plan for what success looks like. He’s gone from regime change to strategic objectives and now is talking about unconditional surrender, which isn’t realistic where he is.”
Beshear also said he thought that Congress should have reined in Mr. Trump’s war powers.
“He is trying to ignore Congress. He’s trying to even ignore the American people,” Beshear said.
He went on to note that the president’s State of the Union address took place “three — four days before he launched this attack,” and Mr. Trump “didn’t even have the respect to tell the American people the threat that he thought Iran posed to us.”
Last week, both the House and the Senate failed to pass resolutions to limit Mr. Trump’s war powers and stop him from taking further military action against Iran without congressional support.
For Newsom, the war with Iran constitutes part of a broader criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At an event last Tuesday in Los Angeles, Newsom had compared Israel to an “apartheid state.” Later, in New Hampshire, he sought to clarify his comment.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman [New York Times] column last week, where Tom used that word of apartheid as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” Newsom explained during a book tour event Thursday night in Portsmouth. “I’m very angry, with what he is doing and why he’s doing it, what he’s going to ultimately try to do to the Supreme Court there, what he’s trying to do to save his own political career.”
Friedman wrote that at the same time that the U.S. and Israel are prosecuting a war in Iran, within Israel, Netanyahu’s government has undertaken efforts to annex the West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes; fire the attorney general who is leading the prosecution against Netanyahu for corruption; and block the government’s attempt to establish a commission to examine the failures that led up to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by Hamas.
CBS News has reached out to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.
On Iran, Newsom said, “I’m very angry about this war, with all due respect, you know, not because I’m angry the supreme leader is dead. Quite the contrary. I’m not naive about the last 37 years of his reign. Forty-seven years since ’79 — the revolution,” Newsom said. “But I’m also mindful that you have a president who still is inarticulate and incapable of giving us the rationale of why? Why now? What’s the endgame?”
Many attendees at Newsom’s book event said that the situation in Iran is a top-of-mind issue for them, too. Some said they’re “horrified” by what is happening.
29-year-old Alicia Marr told CBS News she decided to attend Newsom’s event because of his social media response to the war with Iran.
“There was one spot left, and I decided to pick it up, and it was due to his response to the war, that it is just unacceptable, and I would agree with that,” Marr said.
While some voters like Marr are eager to hear about where potential candidates stand on foreign policy, many at Newsom’s event said they care most about how potential candidates plan to address domestic issues.
“I’m more focused on getting the middle class back on track and fighting the oligarchy, and I’m less invested in international issues,” said Anita Alden, who also attended Newsom’s event,
“I wouldn’t call myself America first, but we have so many problems at home that are my priority,” she told CBS News.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who may also be weighing another White House bid, told Fox 2 Detroit last week that she “unequivocally opposes” the Trump administration’s military action in Iran and urged Congress to take action.
“If we want to stop Donald Trump with this random decision that he has arrived at, then Congress must act, and Congress must act immediately. The American people do not want our sons and daughters to go into this unauthorized war of choice,” Harris said.
Mr. Trump has lashed out against Democrats who have pushed back on his Iran strategy, calling them “losers” last week and arguing that they would criticize any decision he made on Iran.
“If I did it, it’s no good. If I didn’t do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this,” the president said.
Local News
Police say the Attleboro man was driving 104 mph in a 55 mph zone on Route 202 near in Rindge, New Hampshire.
A Massachusetts man was arrested late Wednesday night after police say he was driving more than 100 mph on a New Hampshire roadway.
Officers with the Rindge Police Department stopped a vehicle shortly after 11 p.m. on Route 202 near Sears Drive in Rindge following a report of a car traveling at excessive speed, according to a statement from Chief Rachel Malynowski.
The vehicle, a 2020 Kia Stinger, was spotted traveling at 104 mph in a posted 55 mph zone, Malynowski said.
The driver, a 21-year-old man from Attleboro, was arrested and charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, according to police.
He is scheduled to be arraigned April 5. If convicted, the man faces a fine of at least $750, in addition to the court’s penalty assessment, and a 90-day license suspension, Malynowski said.
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