3 ms·
We don't need a cure for the investment to pay off. If we can simply slow the disease, we'll save a fortune. If the disease takes an additional decade, that's
by melling 8y ago
We don't need a cure for the investment to pay off. If we can simply slow the disease, we'll save a fortune. If the disease takes an additional decade, that's a lot of healthcare costs. You might even die from something else before it gets worse.
I never claimed that if we doubled the money, we'd get double the research. I simply threw out a SMALL number like $10 billion a year. We spend $28 billion on HIV, for example.
https://www.hiv.gov/federal-response/funding/budget https://www.hiv.gov/federal-response/funding/budget
I've read lots of articles over the decades about how AIDS would never be cured. Now you can live a long productive life with the disease.
- Retric 8y agoHIV has a well known cause which makes research more productive. Faster than light communication would be really useful, but we have no idea who to research it or if it’s even possible. Alzheimer’s research is not quite that bad, but we have already spent 10’s of billions and still have no real clue what’s going on let alone a possible way to treat it. PS: People talk about the huge improvement in AIDS treatments, but by default people where often living 15+ years after infection. Note infection not detection. Extending that was always considered a viable approach.
- melling 8y agoYou’re wasting everyone’s time with silly comparisons. No one is trying to violate any laws of physics by researching Alzheimer’s, the brain, etc.
- Retric 8y agoYou hope that’s true, but as I previously said you can’t replace exercise with a drug because of physics. So, it may in fact be a hard physical limitation that prevents drugs from working in this case. I am not arguing it’s likely, only a very real possibility. Because in the end biology is physics, and therefore must deal with it.