90% of Research

According to a recent tv-ad 90% of research is funded by pharmaceutical corporations. Maybe this data is a little overestimated, nonetheless it is still astonishing. In other words the research for health and cure is privately founded. I wonder to which extent this is good. I mean the logic driving the research for health preservation and recovering is the logic of the Return of Investment, the dividend and share logic. The same logic that led one of the German pharmaceutical giant during the WWII to produce (and sell to the government) the infamous zyklon-B gas used to kill millions of people in concentration camps.
If you google around in internet for these terms you’ll find more than one reason to be concerned. Even if trusting the human nature, it is not possible to not doubt whether such research could find inexpensive treatments for any disease. What if something could be simply let pass, or just a spoonful of water and sugar is fine?
Leaving aside these gloomy thoughts, the link of the day is to Sibling Rivalry: C and C++ a pdf paper from B. Stroustrup detailing the source of incompatibilities between C99 and C++89 and the parallel evolution of these languages that aimed to be one.

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