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Government must take a VC approach to funding research | STAT

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Congress is floating a 40% cut to the National Science Foundation and deep reductions to the National Institutes of Health — America’s two flagship research engines. The justification? A $2 trillion deficit. But cutting science to fix the deficit is like burning your seed corn because you’re low on groceries. It’s fiscally shortsighted and strategically self-defeating. ADVERTISEMENT Here’s a better idea: Stop treating public research funding as a sunk cost. Treat it like a venture capital investment. For decades, the U.S. government has played the role of an early-stage investor, seeding everything from cancer immunotherapies to recombinant insulin, from CRISPR to quantum computing. But unlike any rational investor, the federal government takes no royalties, no equity, no intellectual property. NIH and NSF fund the riskiest phase of innovation — and then walk away from the upside. This is no accident. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 allows universities and small businesses to retain full own

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