>You should wonder if this is a good thing, if government should not be involved in this. At the moment, the decision what research to fund is economically driv

>You should wonder if this is a good thing, if government should not be involved in this. At the moment, the decision what research to fund is economically driven. Diseases that aren't profitable are ignored. I think both should happen. That we want both to happen. I fully support government subsidized programs, including research (and a safety net, and highway repair, and...). I'd love to see the government spend more on researching less profitable diseases. However, capitalism, for all its faults, is very efficient at some things. One of those things is the allocation of capital in research projects for those diseases that are profitable. With government allocation of money, we might get the same results, but odds are good that the money would be allocated less than optimally.