Making Atlanta the Silicon Valley of Breakthrough Cures

Government must stop viewing medicine as a budget item to cut rather than people who need to be cured.

by Gilbert F. Amelio and Rod D. Martin
April 3, 2013

America’s Founders sought to unleash the creative energies of every citizen, not just the privileged few.  They created a system designed to encourage and protect commerce and innovation; and indeed, many of them were entrepreneurs and inventors themselves.

Alexis de Tocqueville described the new nation essentially as a classless society, wherein all were treated equally and individuals rose by merit. Though imperfectly applied to some, the difference between Tocqueville’s America and the rest of the world, in his time or ours, was and remains as daylight and dark.  And the results were staggering:  the United States grew from an almost insignificant “start-up” to the most successful nation on the planet in barely more than a century.  Never before nor since has the world witnessed such accomplishment.

America, then and now, has birthed virtually every important industrial innovation. It is our unique culture of liberty that has incubat…