Medicine for profit (in Debates)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44090512/ns/health-cancer/t/new-leukemia-treatment-exceeds-wildest-expectations/?fb_ref=.TkLsPzbmOZo.like&fb_source=home_multiline#.TkPeV2G2qSp

Reading through this article I returned to thinking about how the hell you cure disease with a profit only motivation... how much would they have to charge to make something that actually cures cancer worth making?

Why, you call it a pandemic and incite mass hysteria to sell massive amounts of your vaccine.

Then allow it to be scaled down to the normal run of season illnesses after you've sold all your stock.

*cough*swineflu*cough*

I think I'm coming down with something...

when i read this article a few months ago, i thought the same thing.

http://www.livescience.com/14206-big-pharma-ignoring-potential-cancer-cure.html

whether it turns out to be a cure or not, it definitely seems that it would be worthy of some research funding.

For me the bottom line is treatment versus cure... what motivation does a company have to release a drug that cures an ailment for which they have a profitable treatment?

More important, what is the point of researching causes when you make billions off the treatment (anti-psychotics for you AND your kid!)?

The cure for AIDS will come decades for the cure of all cancer. I shouldn't have to go into why this is, but to let you know, it's not a political problem.

The over-abundance of anti-psychotics is, frankly, making me nuts.
Fortunately there's a 'scrip for that.


Don't worry nov, the cures are coming, the free-market takes care of these things better than we can, you just lack faith :-)

Cancer is not being pursued by the megacorps for treatment profit; from a quick look the US has 300m ish people, of which only a small fraction are estimated to suffer from cancer [only some of which could pay for it].

If they sunk all the R+D into, say, the cure for the common cold - getting a cure for that would net them far more cash return than a cancer cure. The market is simply that much bigger. A cold is typically harmless though, whereas a cancer has a far bigger humanitarian angle and pulls driven people to work on it.

From a strictly profit-based view, they sink millions of dollars into R+D as the company that cracks the problem will be beyond rich from investments, treatment costs would take decades to recover the R+D costs by themselves, setting the cost too high would result in public outcry unless the corp could justify it. Most of the researchers and scientists are in it to save lives; it's the company execs that will try to extract a profit from any good results, in order to keep the company going and paychecks filled. Radiation treatments and experimental drugs are still interim solutions.

Cancer is a difficult one to work with as an example; the specifics on it vary so much from person to person. The articles linked show promising starts...With very small samples of patients.

None at all.

Unless the MD (or someone close to the MD) is suffering from the illness.

Cure's will have to come from other areas. Military, Government or charitable funding.