|
|
|
|
|
|
by AnthonyMouse
2984 days ago
|
|
|
> They're not lottery tickets if they have incalculable odds. The odds aren't incalculable. They might have wide error margins, but that's hardly the same thing. > we don't have a cure because we just don't know how to do it, not because we were too cheap to invest in the biochemical trench warfare to find the right molecule. You're thinking about this at the wrong level of abstraction. It isn't a matter of having some candidate molecules and we just need some monkeys on typewriters or a huge bank of supercomputers to test them all. It's that if you want a cure for cancer, you have to pay scientists to look for it. Not knowing where to look is not the same as not knowing how to look. The fact that it's hard is the reason it's expensive. |
|
|
We do that. It's a two-tier system where the public pays for the science and the companies fish ideas from the science to make into medicines.
>The fact that it's hard is the reason it's expensive.
No, the reason it is expensive is because we've signalled that we are willing to pay large amounts of money, essentially regardless of the actual benefit extended by the state of the art treatment. Even if the state of the science doesn't have much to offer in the way of a cure, you can count on the private sector to make drugs that push the envelope of what we are willing to pay.
But because the job that the private sector does is not the "rate limiting step" as it were, dumping more cash on them is just wasted money.