[rightos]

That's a very left-wing view of things - I don't necessarily disagree with it, but I think there are far less drastic changes that can be made to achieve a comparable result.

You'll have a hard time selling a plan like that to anyone even slightly right leaning - think about it politically for a second. The government decides what drug development gets priority? Remember the death panels talk from a few years ago?

It's viable, but involves a lot of trust in government, so much that even as a fairly left-leaning person myself I'd have to think twice about it.

[axonic]

I agree that trusting the government is out of the question, perhaps we could try an open source solution. Publish drug data, studies, manufacturing knowledge, and all of the usual pages of warnings, indications, contraindications, pharmacokinetics, etc. GitDrugs.org? I think India might have the right strategy with prioritizing human need over economic factors, at least in the short term. I think the problem with funding is a multidisciplinary one, unrelated to how much they can charge for the product. If we can figure out how to match problems->researchers->funding efficiently and effectively, finding drugs and researching existing ones won't be a problem.

[amyjess]

> The government decides what drug development gets priority?

This might become necessary if we're to avoid an antibiotic crisis. Bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics at a greater rate than antibiotics are being developed. The problem isn't that we've tapped out what antibiotics can do, but rather that drug companies have little to no interest in developing antibiotics because there's very little money in it. Antibiotics are un-sexy drugs that don't make for good marketing campaigns.

Ultimately, if we want to continue to have effective antibiotics, a large entity with no profit motive, nigh infinite money, and a monopoly on force (i.e. the government) will have to get involved.

[x0x0]

We're already well down that road via NIH and DOD funding decisions.

[IanCal]

It depends if you think it would stop other funding of drug development.