[jdietrich]

Economies of scale. Shiny hubcap manufacturers will very generously subsidise the R&D for other, more worthy users of a technology. They aren't competitive or independent, they're synergistic. The billions of dollars we "wasted" on making video games look more realistic gave us a revolution in high-performance computing that nobody could have created intentionally.

[refurb]

Each gene therapy is a unique "medicine". There is little economy of scale, at least for the hardest part.

[ninjanomnom]

That's due to a lack of theory and useful abstractions in the tools used to modify genes. We're so early on in the development of that field that if this were computers, we'd still be assembling devices by arranging logic gates by hand. Custom cosmetic gene therapy is a great way to incentivize the better tools.

[refurb]

No, not really.

Genes are far more complex than inserting a sequence into a delivery mechanism.