[Retric]

Seems likely either drugs would end up being used, or government would stop funding drug R&D research.

Saying funding would continue without any benifits seems to be the least likely outcome. Personally, I would be fine stopping all public drug research, but I suspect more people would want to continue...

[refurb]

How would the drugs be used? They still need another 5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars before they are approved?

[Retric]

Presumably, if they continue to fund research, public entities would then pay to finish the process. This would mean either fewer drugs or more money for R&D.

In the end when you change one part of the process you need to assume other parts of a related system will change in some manor.

[refurb]

The ones doing basic research today have zero capability to do the development part. So you'd be looking at spending a ton of money to try and develop the needed expertise to bring a molecule all the way to market. Would that also include commercialization - things like marketing?

[Retric]

I don’t know. Clinical trials can already be outsourced, so that’s not a major issue. And only two countries allow for direct to consumer drug marketing so that’s clearly unnecessary.

Honestly, this is simply not going to happen in the US so it’s hard to say what’s realistic.

[refurb]

I wasn't referring to DTC marketing. DTC is a small percentage of the marketing companies do.

Any yes, you can outsource running a trial, but you still need someone to design it, process the data, put together an NDA and submit for approval.

I can only imagine the complete clusterfuck that would be if it was all done by public employees.

[Retric]

I understand you have some concerns, but it’s not like people doing cutting edge drug research don’t know how to do research.

Large drug companies are not bringing magic recipes to the mix here. Often it’s the same researchers who found the drug who end up starting drug a company to profit from their research.

As to advertising to doctors their is plenty of evidence this is harmful. It’s easy to for doctors to keep up with relevant drugs as so few are added each year and many are extremely specialized. Advertising results in over prescription which is known to be extremely harmful with opioids being an obvious example.