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Thank you for your opinion! :) You make it sound like there is a hard barrier between these two options but like most things in reality it is a continuum. You

Thank you for your opinion! :) You make it sound like there is a hard barrier between these two options but like most things in reality it is a continuum. You can have mainstream R&D be publicly funded all the way and not necessarily restrict private companies from competing. I personally believe that there is a good chance that a centralized publicly funded and nonprofit pharmaceutical organization could outperform most for profits on various important metrics. At least something that should be investigated and not dismissed outright. Regarding long-shots, I think you fall victim to the survivorship bias here. Even if some good things came out of it, the question is at what cost? If many tries fail you really need some big wins to cover those costs. Thus, it’s really something that you should look into on an empirical level before making strong judgements.

aaavl2821 8y ago
Out of curiosity, do you have any specific proposals thoughts about what this centrally funded / non profit approach would look like, and why it would work? My contention is that drugs are expensive because developing drugs is expensive. Developing drugs is expensive because biology is hard. Public vs private funding would not change that
- ace_of_spades 8y ago
  Hey, sorry for getting back to you so late but I had a full weekend :) I am not an expert in the pharmaceutical space so take everything I say with a big grain of salt. I would think it could be possible to have some agency like NSF or FDA be tasked with financing studies to develop medicines and do medical trials, etc. I don’t think it would need to look much different what there is now, maybe higher and more long-term grants for applied R&D. Manufacturing could then be outsourced, Apple style. I guess the main challenge would be to have reporting and grants be distributed effectively and fairly. There should be some level of friendly competition/ cooperation to ensure that progress is being made. But I think, in principle this already works pretty well through peer review and on some level metric tracking for individual researchers (although I would argue we still often track the wrong metrics). So it’s all about designing the right incentives work work to get done, profit is but one of the possible metrics to achieve that. This of course does not change that the work itself is incredibly hard. The benefit of doing it in a more „structured“ and nonprofit way is that it is possible to create a more specific/ tailored/ guided set of outcomes given the ability to align the incentives with societal goals. Everything you see going on in blockchain is work in that direction. How can we design economic systems where incentives are aligned to create an overall desireable outcome for individuals, the community and society at large?

aaavl2821 8y ago

Out of curiosity, do you have any specific proposals thoughts about what this centrally funded / non profit approach would look like, and why it would work? My contention is that drugs are expensive because developing drugs is expensive. Developing drugs is expensive because biology is hard. Public vs private funding would not change that

ace_of_spades 8y ago
Hey, sorry for getting back to you so late but I had a full weekend :) I am not an expert in the pharmaceutical space so take everything I say with a big grain of salt. I would think it could be possible to have some agency like NSF or FDA be tasked with financing studies to develop medicines and do medical trials, etc. I don’t think it would need to look much different what there is now, maybe higher and more long-term grants for applied R&D. Manufacturing could then be outsourced, Apple style. I guess the main challenge would be to have reporting and grants be distributed effectively and fairly. There should be some level of friendly competition/ cooperation to ensure that progress is being made. But I think, in principle this already works pretty well through peer review and on some level metric tracking for individual researchers (although I would argue we still often track the wrong metrics). So it’s all about designing the right incentives work work to get done, profit is but one of the possible metrics to achieve that. This of course does not change that the work itself is incredibly hard. The benefit of doing it in a more „structured“ and nonprofit way is that it is possible to create a more specific/ tailored/ guided set of outcomes given the ability to align the incentives with societal goals. Everything you see going on in blockchain is work in that direction. How can we design economic systems where incentives are aligned to create an overall desireable outcome for individuals, the community and society at large?