What Egyptians Want Now

Call it belated full disclosure. Ever since the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, the Muslim Brotherhood has reemerged as a major force in Egyptian politics. For most of that time, however, it has played coy about its political aspirations and ideological agenda. These days, though, the Islamist movement has become a great deal more frank about its plans for Egypt.

“At this period, we would like to lead the society to achieve its Islamic identity in preparation for the Islamic rule,” Saad Husseini, a member of the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, proclaimed at a recent rally in Cairo. These ideas have been echoed by other Brotherhood officials, who haveoutlined sweeping social changes once “Islam enters the lives, ethics, and dealings of the people.”

Not surprisingly, such statements have created an uproar among Egypt’s leftist and secular political parties, who are leery of political competition from their religious flank. Far more telling, however, has been the Egyptian public’s tepid response to the Brotherhood agenda. A recent pollby the International Peace Institute, for example, found only 38 percent of respondents had positive views of the movement, and just 12 percent said they’d actually vote for the Brotherhood if parliamentary elections were held today. This suggests the views of Husseini and company are of significantly more limited appeal than commonly believed—at least for the time being.

But all that could change soon enough. In particular, the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections, now slated for September, may end up giving the movement far greater voice, and power, in Egyptian politics. “If the Brotherhood wins around 30 percent of the seats, it will have significant sway over the writing of the constitution,” Mideast analyst Ryan Mauro has astutely pointed out. In fact, “it may effectively have veto power over key decisions like Hezbollah had in Lebanon before it collapsed the Hariri-led government.” Indeed, other observers have suggested, such an influential minority may be exactly what the Brotherhood is gunning for, since it would allow the group to effectively steer Egyptian politics from behind the scenes. And with a bit of savvy political maneuvering, the Brotherhood’s electoral margin—and its power—could be amplified still further, if the group runs or (aligns itself with) candidates who are nominally independent but privately sympathetic to the group’s outlook.

In other words, there’s still ample reason to worry about Egypt’s political trajectory—and the Brotherhood’s role in it. History, after all, is replete with examples of the most organized political and ideological elements inheriting the fruits of a society in ferment (think of the Bolshevik hijacking of the Russian revolution in 1917, or Hitler’s rise to prominence in Weimar Germany, or Khomeini’s exploitation of anti-Shah sentiment in 1979). Moreover, as I’ve noted previously, Egyptian society is, in the main, both conservative and religious, making it potentially fertile soil for the Brotherhood’s ideas.

Washington has a huge stake in the political contest now unfolding in Cairo. In the aftermath of Mubarak’s ouster, the attention of American policymakers and the media alike has wandered elsewhere (like Libya). Yet it’s hard to overstate the negative impact that an Islamist takeover in Egypt would have on U.S. policy, and American interests, in the Middle East.

But more political pluralism and greater civil society could help temper such an outcome—if not prevent it outright. America therefore needs to make serious investments in the true building blocks of democracy in Egypt: greater political participation, economic liberalization, religious and press freedoms, and transparency.

It certainly has the economic clout to do so. With nearly $2 billion allocated annually, Egypt is one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid. And the future Egyptian government, whatever its political orientation, is bound to remain interested in such economic assistance—and likely to accommodate at least some demands from the West in order to get it.

All of which creates an opening for Washington to influence Egypt’s political direction, if it is bold enough to seize it. If it doesn’t, though, the Muslim Brotherhood most assuredly will.

Pope John Paul II - More to come

Pope

Abuse Crisis Fuels Debate Over John Paul II's Legacy

Rome (CNN) – John Paul II was a rock star of a pope, arguably the most effective ambassador of religious belief in a highly secular age. Yet in the years since his death in April 2005 an undercurrent of doubt and concern has emerged related to his handling of the problem of priestly sex abuse, the most serious crisis to rock Catholicism in centuries.

New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd recently articulated the verdict among some detractors of the late pope: “How can you be a saint if you fail to protect innocent children?”

While ambivalence about his record on the abuse crisis may not call into questionhis personal holiness or his towering accomplishments, it’s become an unavoidable chapter of the John Paul story, representing probably the single biggest question mark as his Sunday beatification - the final step before formal sainthood – approaches.

Critics point both to policies and to individual cases which, they believe, illustrate a pattern of denial on John Paul’s watch.

In the handful of instances during the John Paul years in which local bishops tried to formally expel abusers from the priesthood, in a process known as laicization, the Vatican often urged caution – not to excuse abuse, but to defend the priesthood.

Key officials in John Paul’s papacy also expressed reservations about policies that would have required reporting abuse to police.

A Colombian Cardinal whom John Paul tapped to head a Vatican office responsible for policy questions about the priesthood, Darío Castrillón Hoyos, actually wrote to a French bishop in 2001 to congratulate him for refusing to report a priest charged with abuse.

Castrillón was also the official behind a now-infamous 1997 Vatican letter to the Irish bishops expressing opposition to their “mandatory reporter” policy.

The case of the late Mexican priest Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of areligious order called the Legionaries of Christ, is often cited by critics. In 2006, the Legionaries acknowledged that Maciel had been guilty of sexual abuse of former members, as well as having children out of wedlock with women with whom he maintained long-term relationships.

Over the years, Maciel was a favorite of John Paul II because of his loyalty to Rome and his success in generating vocations to the priesthood.

A similar case involves Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer of Vienna, Austria, who died in 2003. Groer resigned in 1995 after facing charges of abuse, but was not subjected to a church penalty.

In May 2010, Groer’s successor as Cardinal of Vienna, Christoph Schonborn, said that a top official under John Paul II had blocked the investigation. (Schonborn later apologized for publicly reprimanding a fellow cardinal, but never retracted the charge.)

Defenders of John Paul II generally make two points.

First, they say, the Church has been on a learning curve about priestly sex abuse and that it’s unfair to judge John Paul by today’s standards.

In fact, it was John Paul II who kick-started the process of chuch reform in 2001 by issuing a new set of rules centralizing responsibility for the crisis in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a powerful doctrinal office headed at the time by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict XVI. John Paul also approved an expedited process for weeding abusers out of the priesthood.

If things slowed down from 2001 to 2005, they say, that’s largely explicable by the late pope’s long illness as a result of his Parkinson’s disease – a period in which his primary contribution was no longer governance, but offering the world an example of how to bear suffering with dignity.

Second, his fans argue, the crisis has to be understood in the context of John Paul’s reform of the Catholic priesthood. By 1978, when John Paul was elected, more than 45,000 men had left the priesthood since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

John Paul turned that around, offering a compelling personal example of priestly life and inspiring a new generation eager to stand “in the person of Christ.” Priests who take that charge seriously, defenders of John Paul II say, are less likely to commit abuse.

To focus on individual cases such as Maciel rather than on John Paul’s overall approach to priestly life, according to papal biographer George Weigel, is “grotesquely disproportionate from any serious historical point of view.”

There’s no reason to believe the Catholic sexual abuse crisis is nearing an end. Just days ago, a federal judge in Oregon directed the Vatican to turn over documents in a lawsuit related to a priest accused of abuse who died in 1992. It’s the first time an American court has issued such an order, and it could trigger a diplomatic row, since the Vatican is a sovereign state under international law.

Such ferment will likely keep debate over John Paul’s record alive among victims, lawyers, historians and pundits.

So far, however, that debate doesn’t seem to be putting much of a dent in popular enthusiasm for the former pope. A Marist College/Knights of Columbus poll released this week found that 74% of Americans, and 90% of American Catholics, regard John Paul II as a worthy candidate for beatification.

In Rome, more than two million people are expected to take part in beatification-related activities this week, and there’s a cottage industry of new books, calendars, keychains, documentaries, and other paraphernalia memorializing John Paul II.

The Vatican has always insisted that declaring a pope a saint isn’t to ratify every policy choice of his pontificate. Rather, it means that despite whatever failures occurred, he was at bottom a holy man. When it comes to John Paul II, plenty of people still seem eager to say, “Amen.”

LEADING ATHEIST PUBLISHES SECULAR BIBLE

The question arose early in British academic A.C. Grayling’s career: What if those ancient compilers who’d made Bibles, the collected religious texts that were translated, edited, arranged and published en masse, had focused instead on assembling the non-religious teachings of civilization’s greatest thinkers?

What if the book that billions have turned to for ethical guidance wasn’t tied to commandments from God or any one particular tradition but instead included the writings of Aristotle, the reflections of Confucius, the poetry of Baudelaire? What would that book look like, and what would it mean?

Decades after he started asking such questions, what Grayling calls “a lifetime’s work” has hit bookshelves. “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom, was published this month. Grayling crafted it by using more than a thousand texts representing several hundred authors, collections and traditions.

The Bible would have been “a very different book and may have produced a very different history for mankind,” had it drawn on the work of philosophers and writers as opposed to prophets and apostles, says Grayling, a philosopher and professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, who is an atheist.

“Humanist ethics didn’t claim to be derived from a deity," he says. "(They) tended to start from a sympathetic understanding of human nature and accept that there’s a responsibility that each individual has to work out the values they live by and especially to recognize that the best of our good lives revolve around having good relationships with people.” 

Humanists rely on human reason as an alternative to religion or belief in God in attempting to find meaning and purpose in life.

Determined to make his material accessible, Grayling arranged his nearly 600-page "Good Book" much like the Bible, with double columns, chapters (the first is even called Genesis) and short verses. And much like the best-selling King James Bible, which is celebrating its 400^th year, his book is written in a type of English that transcends time.

Like the Bible, "The Good Book," opens with a garden scene. But instead of Adam and Eve, Grayling's Genesis invokes Isaac Newton, the British scientist who pioneered the study of gravity.

"It was from the fall of fruit from such a tree that new inspiration came for inquiry into the nature of things," reads a verse from "The Good Book's" first chapter.

"When Newton sat in his garden, and saw what no one had seen before: that an apple draws the earth to itself, and the earth the apple," the verse continues, "Through a mutual force of nature that holds all things, from the planets to the stars, in unifying embrace."

The book's final chapter features a secular humanist version of the Ten Commandments: "Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your utmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous: at least, sincerely try."

Grayling, reached Friday at a New York hotel just as he began his U.S. book tour, has been dubbed by some a “velvet atheist” or an “acceptable face of atheism,” he says, in contrast to more stridently anti-religious writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, both of whom he counts as friends.

In other contexts, Grayling – who will soon take over as president of the British Humanist Association - admits he’s written critically about religion. But not in "The Good Book."

“It’s not part of a quarrel,” he says of his latest work. “It’s a modest offering… another contribution to the conversation that mankind must have with itself,” and one he says he wrote for everyone, Bible lovers included.

Given where society is today, inviting that conversation is all the more important, he says.

More than 16% of Americans say they are unaffiliated religiously, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Even so, Grayling says the hunger for a spiritual connection continues. That yearning, he argues , can be satisfied for many by taking a walk in the country, curling up with a beautiful book of poetry or even in falling in love.

“In all different ways, we can celebrate the good in the world,” he says.

While many intellectual traditions – religious and otherwise – teach that there’s “one right way to live,” Grayling says he hopes “The Good Book” will encourage people to “go beyond your teachers, your text” to understand that “we have to respect and relate to one another.”

Early sales indicate that people are open to what this new "Bible" teaches. On Monday, Grayling’s book was number 41 on Amazon’s UK bestseller list and number 1 in the philosophy and spirituality categories.

Study: Alcohol-energy drink combo riskier than booze alone

Combining the caffeine jolt of energy drinks with the intoxicating effects of alcohol is riskier than drinking alcohol alone, a new study suggests.

• 
  By Durell Hall, Courier-Journal
  Research indicates that drinkers are more likely to drive if they mix alcohol with energy drinks.

Enlarge

By Durell Hall, Courier-Journal

Research indicates that drinkers are more likely to drive if they mix alcohol with energy drinks.

Adding to growing research on the effects of trendy cocktails such as vodka and the energy drink Red Bull, scientists from Northern Kentucky University split 56 college students between the ages of 21 and 33 into four groups. The students received either an alcoholic beverage, an energy drink, a mixed drink with both ingredients, or a placebo.

All drinks were made to look and taste like alcoholic energy drinks, so participants did not know which they were consuming. Researchers measured how quickly the students could execute and suppress actions after the dose and asked them to rate feelings such as stimulation, sedation, impairment and levels of intoxication.

All of the students who drank alcohol showed impaired impulse control. But those who drank the alcoholic energy drink perceived themselves to be less impaired than those who drank the same dose of alcohol alone, the study authors said, which could make them more likely to take risks such as driving while intoxicated.

"This study demonstrates these drinks are different. .. and consumers should be aware," said study author Cecile Marczinski, an assistant professor in the department of psychological science. "It might be appropriate to put warning labels on energy drinks saying they should not be mixed with alcohol."

While combining alcohol with caffeinated beverages is nothing new — hence the ubiquitous rum and Coke— energy drinks contain about three times the amount of caffeine as cola, making them especially stimulating, Marczinski said.

Prior surveys suggest that 30 to 50% of U.S. teenagers and young people consume energy drinks, which may also contain stimulants such as guarana. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned ready-made alcoholic beverages with added caffeine in November 2010 after a year-long review of scientific literature.

Preparing and serving mixed drinks that combine caffeine and alcohol in bars, parties or elsewhere is legal, however.

The stimulation from caffeinated alcoholic drinks counters the sedating effects of alcohol, making drinkers feel like they're not quite as affected by the liquor, Marczinski said. However, the energy drinks don't alter the level of behavioral impairment, just the perception of it.

"I'm most concerned about impaired driving," she said. "Typically, a lot of people's judgment is not good even at the best of times when they're drinking alcohol. It's really that sleepy feeling that cues people it's time to go home. This might extend the whole party experience longer than it should."

She and the other researchers noted that further studies are needed to determine whether the energy drink cocktails are escalating risky drinking practices among young people, who already demonstrate high levels of binge drinking.

The study is published online in advance of the July 2011 print issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, said his research in this area indicates that drinkers are more likely to drive if they mix alcohol with energy drinks. Other studies show increased risks of violence, unprotected sex and even sexual assault among those who consume this combination, he said.

"There's this perception that if you drink caffeine, it will sober you up, and it's just completely not true," Goldberger said. "Because the effects of the caffeine work in one region of the brain and the effects of the alcohol work in another, so they don't cancel each other out. Some people call it wide-awake drunk."

Solar Activity Heats Up: Sunspots Finally Return

ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2011) — If you've ever stood in front of a hot stove, watching a pot of water and waiting impatiently for it to boil, you know what it feels like to be a solar physicist.

---

See Also:

Space & Time

• Solar Flare
• Sun
• Northern Lights
• Solar System
• Astronomy
• Extrasolar Planets

Reference

• Solar flare
• Solar radiation
• Corona
• Sunspot

Back in 2008, the solar cycle plunged into the deepest minimum in nearly a century. Sunspots all but vanished, solar flares subsided, and the sun was eerily quiet.

"Ever since, we've been waiting for solar activity to pick up," says Richard Fisher, head of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. "It's been three long years."

Quiet spells on the sun are nothing new. They come along every 11 years or so -- it's a natural part of the solar cycle. This particular solar minimum, however, was lasting longer than usual, prompting some researchers to wonder if it would ever end.

News flash: The pot is starting to boil. "Finally," says Fisher, "we are beginning to see some action."

As 2011 unfolds, sunspots have returned and they are crackling with activity. On February 15th and again on March 9th, Earth orbiting satellites detected a pair of "X-class" solar flares--the most powerful kind of x-ray flare. The last such eruption occurred back in December 2006.

Another eruption on March 7th hurled a billion-ton cloud of plasma away from the sun at five million mph (2200 km/s). The rapidly expanding cloud wasn't aimed directly at Earth, but it did deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field. The off-center impact on March 10th was enough to send Northern Lights spilling over the Canadian border into US states such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.

"That was the fastest coronal mass ejection in almost six years," says Angelos Vourlidas of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. "It reminds me of a similar series of events back in Nov. 1997 that kicked off Solar Cycle 23, the solar cycle before this one."

"To me," says Vourlidas, "this marks the beginning of Solar Cycle 24."

The slow build-up to this moment is more than just "the watched pot failing to boil," says Ron Turner, a space weather analyst at Analytic Services, Inc. "It really has been historically slow."

There have been 24 numbered solar cycles since researchers started keeping track of them in the mid-18th century. In an article just accepted for publication by the Space Weather Journal, Turner shows that, in all that time, only four cycles have started more slowly than this one. "Three of them were in the Dalton Minimum, a period of depressed solar activity in the early 19th century. The fourth was Cycle #1 itself, around 1755, also a relatively low solar cycle," he says.

In his study, Turner used sunspots as the key metric of solar activity. Folding in the recent spate of sunspots does not substantially alter his conclusion: "Solar Cycle 24 is a slow starter," he says.

Better late than never.

Frugal Summer BBQ: 7 Money Saving Tips for BBQ

Asummer is not a summer without BBQs, I personally love BBQs and host several every year (well except this year). A BBQ does not have to cost you an arm and a leg, there are many ways to save on BBQs and yet make them fun and enjoyable.

Yumm BBQ

1. Bring Your Own Meat
This is probably one of the best ways to have a great bbq, just ask your guests to bring the meat. This has several benefits. First of all, it saves you money. Second, you do not have to worry about who likes what. I have friends from various backgrounds some eat beef, some only chicken, others do not eat pork, etc. By asking them to bring their own meat I am sure there will be a variety of everything for everyone.

2. Stock up on Charcoal
If you are planning on hosting BBQs than stock up on charcoal when they are on sale, there really isn’t an expiration date for Charcoal so you can keep them for next year if needed. This is if you use a charcoal grill.

3. Bring Your Own Drinks
If you provide the meat than ask your guests to bring the drinks, it’s similar to bringing their meat. Everyone may have different preferences this way you will be sure that there is something to drink for everyone.

4. Forget Paper Plates
Paper plates may seem like a good idea, and although they are easy to clean – garbage them – they are not the cheapest way to go. If you will have regular BBQs than I suggest you purchase some plastic dinnerware from a department store and keep it for years coming. This will not only save you money in the long run but will also save the environment.

5. Buy in Off Season
This can apply to many things in life; make your equipment purchases during the off season. Between November- April is a good time to purchase BBQ equipment it will save you some money.

6. Have Snacks and Ice-Cream for Kids
If you going to a park for BBQ than make sure you have some ice-cream and snacks for the kids. No matter how much you feed kids they always want ice- cream so having some with you will ensure you do not have to purchase from ice-cream trucks for triple the price.

7. Purchase Bone-In Cuts of Meat
If you’re looking for money saving ideas that let you do more with your budget, purchase bone-in cuts of meat. Bone-in meat will not only save you money but the bones help keep the meat from drying out on the grill and add additional flavor.

Nanofiber Spheres Carrying Cells Injected Into Wounds to Grow Tissue

ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2011) — For the first time, scientists have made star-shaped, biodegradable polymers that can self-assemble into hollow, nanofiber spheres, and when the spheres are injected with cells into wounds, these spheres biodegrade, but the cells live on to form new tissue.

Developing this nanofiber sphere as a cell carrier that simulates the natural growing environment of the cell is a very significant advance in tissue repair, says Peter Ma, professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and lead author of a paper about the research scheduled for advanced online publication in Nature Materials. Co-authors are Xiaohua Liu and Xiaobing Jin.

Repairing tissue is very difficult and success is extremely limited by a shortage of donor tissue, says Ma, who also has an appointment at the U-M College of Engineering. The procedure gives hope to people with certain types of cartilage injuries for which there aren't good treatments now. It also provides a better alternative to ACI, which is a clinical method of treating cartilage injuries where the patient's own cells are directly injected into the patient's body. The quality of the tissue repair by the ACI technique isn't good because the cells are injected loosely and are not supported by a carrier that simulates the natural environment for the cells, Ma says.

To repair complex or oddly shaped tissue defects, an injectable cell carrier is desirable to achieve accurate fit and to minimize surgery, he says. Ma's lab has been working on a biomimetic strategy to design a cell matrix -- a system that copies biology and supports the cells as they grow and form tissue -- using biodegradable nanofibers.

Ma says the nanofibrous hollow microspheres are highly porous, which allows nutrients to enter easily, and they mimic the functions of cellular matrix in the body. Additionally, the nanofibers in these hollow microspheres do not generate much degradation byproducts that could hurt the cells, he says.

The nanofibrous hollow spheres are combined with cells and then injected into the wound. When the nanofiber spheres, which are slightly bigger than the cells they carry, degrade at the wound site, the cells they are carrying have already gotten a good start growing because the nanofiber spheres provide an environment in which the cells naturally thrive.

This approach has been more successful than the traditional cell matrix currently used in tissue growth, he says. Until now, there has been no way to make such a matrix injectable so it's not been used to deliver cells to complex-shaped wounds.

During testing, the nanofiber repair group grew as much as three to four times more tissue than the control group, Ma says. The next step is to see how the new cell carrier works in larger animals and eventually in people to repair cartilage and other tissue types.

Emerging markets are gaining ground in medical technology innovation

Emerging markets, led by China, India and Brazil, are gaining ground in their capacity to produce the latest in medical technology innovation and may surpass developed countries in innovative healthcare delivery over the next decade, according to a new PwC report published today titled Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard: The race for global leadership. Growth in these emerging market economies is attracting the focus of the world’s innovation resources and activity, and they are taking the lead in developing a new generation of small, faster, more affordable medical devices.

The report is based on the findings of the PwC Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard, a new, multifaceted assessment of the capacity of nine countries to adapt to the changing nature of innovation: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

While there has been much anecdotal evidence that the centre of innovation is moving away from the U.S. the incumbent global leader, PwC is the first to analyse the specific factors that contribute to medical technology innovation. PwC quantified five factors, using 86 different metrics, to evaluate how well each nation promotes the advance of innovation, looking at the past five years and projecting change over the next decade to 2020.

The Innovation Scorecard ranks the overall capacity of each country on a scale of 1 to 9 with 9 being the highest score. A top-line view of the report finding reveals:

• The U.S. currently holds its position as the global leader in medical technology innovation, and because of decades of innovation dominance, it continues to show the greatest capacity for medical technology innovation. The U.S. currently has a total score of 7.1.
• The scores of the other developed nations (the UK, Germany, Japan and France) fall within a tight band of 4.8 to 5.4. Among the developed countries included in this study, Germany and the U.K. demonstrate the strongest support for innovation and Japan the weakest.
• Israel, despite its small size, ranks near the level of the European nations, a reflection of its strong capacity to foster innovation.
• The emerging markets lag behind developed ones. China, with its powerful economic growth engine, scores 3.4, ranking it higher than India and Brazil, each of which scored 2.7.

Looking to the future, the U.S. is expected to continue to lead in medical technology innovation, but also will lose ground to other countries during the next decade. The Innovation Scorecard also projects relative declines for Japan, Israel, France, the UK and Germany. By contrast, China, India and Brazil are likely to see gains during the coming decade. China, which has shown the largest improvement in its medical technology innovation capacity during the past five years, is expected to continue to outpace other countries and reach near parity with the developed nations of Europe by 2020.

Mike Swanick U.S. pharmaceuticals, medical device and life sciences industry leader, PwC, said:

“A confluence of social, demographic, economic and technology changes is altering the dynamics of the medical technology field. As a result, ecosystems that promote medical technology innovation – with supportive elements such as access to financing, scientific knowledge and patient interaction – are being established around the world, These changes are creating opportunities for companies – and entire nations – that are able to adapt to a rapidly evolving environment.”

Simon Friend, global pharmaceuticals, medical device and life sciences industry leader, PwC, added:

“If developed counties do not step up levels of investment in innovation, over the next decade new markets will surpass developed countries in innovative healthcare delivery; stimuli for new technologies is being built through the education system and we will see businesses focussing on new markets for new ideas and expanding sales bases.”

The Innovation Scorecard examined where each of the nine countries evaluated stands in relation to five broad “pillars” that helped to make the U.S. a leader in medical technology innovation for the past several decades: Powerful financial incentives such as reimbursements for adoption of new technologies; resources for innovation, such as academic medical centers; a supportive regulatory system; demanding and price-insensitive patients; and a supportive investment community of venture capitalists and other investors.

The Innovation Scorecard indicated that the ideal innovation ecosystem itself is changing as the nature of medical technology innovation evolves. Some of this transformation is being driven by changes in the U.S., such as more expensive, less-predictable regulatory approvals, an increased focus on value and cost-effective solutions in healthcare and increasingly international investments in R&D. Other dynamics are the result of changes abroad, including increasing investment in local academic medical centers; investment in research programmes; the return of foreign-educated scientists and doctors to their homelands; advancement of mobile health technologies that expand access to care; and a focus on the lean, frugal and reverse innovation necessary to deliver faster, better, cheaper and more effective healthcare solutions in these markets.

As a result of these many factors, medical technology companies increasingly are seeking clinical data, new-product registration and first revenue in non-U.S. markets that are becoming more attractive and supportive of new innovation. Medical technology innovators already are going first to market in Europe and, by 2020, likely will move into emerging countries before entering the U.S.

Despite the size of the markets in China, India and Brazil, their global leadership in medical technology innovation is not necessarily preordained. Factors related to intellectual property protection, difficulty of doing business in some emerging countries and weak local supplier networks could make these markets less attractive, despite their size, and could hinder these nations’ effort to assume innovation leadership.

Christopher L. Wasden, PwC managing director and co-author of the report said:

“We created the Innovation Scorecard because we wanted to better understand how medical technology innovation is changing and which nations have the strongest capacity and capability for innovation. The findings will be helpful to government officials and regulators seeking to advance policies that foster innovation as well as medical technology companies working to develop their own commercialisation strategies.”