I was just thinking of ways to have the money that goes into treatments go to the pockets of those who really created those treatments. The day to day researchers everywhere. It goes to the pharma sales folks. To the doctor. To the advertiser. Etc. Till it trickles down to few $$ on the pocket of the researchers. It is also well known that many of the funding non-profit collecting organizations take a good chunk of the money they collect to pay for their overhead. I am not going back now and checking this data, but if I remember right, the CEO of the ACS (American Cancer Society) gets paid about $1M. So, one way I thought was if scientists directly asked for money to the public to pay for their research. That would also give a chance to people outside the status quo (young researchers, etc...). But what could they give in exchange, though, of that money? A thought was information on the topic. The researcher is an expert on that topic, so, how about he contributed part time to a blog/a web/etc... on that topic? Or even more targeted. How about he answered emails from the donors? Anyhow, the following post talks about this topic. Not on the return to the funders, but on the way to select/attract funding:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/startup-science/
Which mentions:
http://www.petridish.org/
http://www.sciflies.org/
http://myprojects.cancerresearchuk.org/ This is specially interesting and focus on cancer.
http://scifund.wordpress.com/about/
http://www.rockethub.com/
Still a lot to be done but it is a beginning.
PS.: For more entrepreneurial kind of projects, check www.kickstarter.com
