One reasonable way to look at the "bang for the buck" invested in biomedicine is to look at r&d productivity of the pharma industry. Pharma spends more on r&d t

One reasonable way to look at the "bang for the buck" invested in biomedicine is to look at r&d productivity of the pharma industry. Pharma spends more on r&d than publicly funded research, and innovations in academic research typically trickle down to pharma By most estimations, productivity of biomedical research is decreasing. Some estimate it is decreasing exponentially One explanation is the low hanging fruits model, but I prefer an explanation that combines the low hanging fruit model (that we rapidly exploit the most obvious applications of a new tech) with a "punctuated equilibrium" perspective of innovation -- that every so often, we get a new breakthrough that opens up a whole new space to play in. Maybe gene editing, gene therapy, cell therapy, the microbiome will have that impact today