The profits aren't limitless. Pharma is an industry in decline, because drug r&d is so hard As it currently stands, 60%+ of the new drugs that are developed in

The profits aren't limitless. Pharma is an industry in decline, because drug r&d is so hard As it currently stands, 60%+ of the new drugs that are developed in the world these days are for cancer or rare disease. Because for most other diseases, drug r&d is not profitable. Neuro is too risky because the biology is complex. Cardiovascular and metabolic disease is too costly because of regulatory and reimbursement hurdles. Infectious disease is a field where generics dominate, and the regulatory system is failing to support efforts to fight drug resistant strains For-profit companies fund 3x what governments fund. We don't have the federal budgets to support a public drug industry. And we don't have the political will at least in the US to empower federal funding increases of that magnitude It certainly isn't ideal that profit driven companies control which drugs get approved. But if profit driven companies didn't fund new drug development, no one else would