I am a panelist Friday at an interesting, free and open-to-the-public event:

This Friday, February 8, George Washington University (GWU) Law School and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) are co-sponsoring a workshop on prizes to stimulate medical innovation.

The objective of this workshop is to bring together policy makers and experts to debate the proposal to create a new mechanism to stimulate private investments in medical R&D. We will consider the economic, management and legal issues surrounding the use of monetary prizes as an alternative mechanism to stimulate private investments in R&D. This will include, but not be limited to, a discussion of the proposed Medical Prize Fund Act of 2007 (S.2210, 110th Congress) introduced by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

"It is natural for consumers to distrust monopolies, which can even limit access to medicine. The Prize Fund bill, from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) shows us that we don't have to tolerate monopolies or the abuses of monopoly pricing to stimulate innovation.