It seems that this could be the case. Even in an article that discusses ways in which M.I.T. is trying to make the patent system less inefficient there is no mention of any alternative to patent support for financing drug research. It's good to see that M.I.T. is devoting its resources to reducing the inefficiency of the patent system, but its efforts would probably be better directed towards developing alternative mechanisms, that assumes that M.I.T. is not also prohibited from discussing alternatives.
--Dean Baker
