[hrq]

I believe something similar is happening in drug development right now. It may take less than 5, 10, 15 years to see the impact to the US. But from someone who has a vantage point to see it across many parts of the industry, including having seen the evolution of Intel / TSMC, I think it is a very similar story. Right now is like 2007 (or maybe even a bit later) for therapeutics. In the future, we will look back on this year as the year we gave it up.

[esafak]

What's happening exactly?

[vel0city]

Billions in grants have already been cancelled. Lots of research is losing its funding.

[hrq]

Agreed. Also the biotech industry is largely getting defunded. Venture funds are pointing dollars elsewhere so fewer new companies are being started, while more biotechs are being started in China.

Most new drugs come from biotechs nowadays (not all of them, not GLP-1’s). But many do. If that innovation is happening in China and not the US today then it will create an issue in several years. We will not control our supply chain for a critical set of goods.

[vel0city]

Biotech still has a lot of basic science kinds of questions in it too. There's a lot about biology we seem to not really know in large populations. A ton of things we need to know more about before we even talk about commercial applications still.

[hrq]

OTOH, the pharma industry has large revenues selling commercially viable therapeutics that seem to have dramatically increased human lifespan and increased quality of life. Even without fully understanding biology there is a lot that can and has been done.

[CincinnatiMan]

It could be argued that new drug development is less needed during wartime than processor manufacturing.

[hrq]

New drugs have changed the course of some wars!