3 ms·

The big issue I see here is the proper allocation of this earmarked funding. Would all of it go to aids research? Maybe half to aids, half to schizophrenia trea

The big issue I see here is the proper allocation of this earmarked funding. Would all of it go to aids research? Maybe half to aids, half to schizophrenia treatments? But then what about [insert condition here]? The 'free' market may have a lot of perverse incentives in this environment, but I'm not sure how else you could prioritize which drug research has the most impact (without it turning into a capital sink that has severely diminishing returns due to limitations of the skilled humans necessary to do the job)

fallingfrog 7y ago
Can’t possibly be any worse than it is now, with Lyme disease still having no vaccine while billions of dollars are plowed into boner pills.
- ChrisLomont 7y ago
  Maybe one is harder to solve?
- mattkrause 7y ago
  The initial "boner pill" was also discovered entirely by accident--it was originally meant to be a hypertension/angina drug. While it wasn't very good for that, it did have a...marked side-effect, which Pfizer ran with.
InvisibleCities 7y ago
>The big issue I see here is the proper allocation of this earmarked funding. The overwhleming majority of exploratory, pre-clinical, and early-phase clinical research is already funded by government grants, particularly from the CDC and NIH. To the extent that this is a "problem", it is one the system already faces. Personally, I would prefer that research funding decisions are made by public officials that are at least nominally accountable to the electorate over ruthless capitalists who are accountable only to their shareholders.
- aantix 7y ago
  >The overwhleming majority of exploratory, pre-clinical, and early-phase clinical research is already funded by government grants, particularly from the CDC and NIH. The overwhelming number of SAAS prototypes are made by engineers on the weekends - just take a few of those, and $$$, profit. ... Of course not. Exploratory, initial research is not the same as being successful at bringing a drug to market. Who decides what research to follow? It's successful in animal models, but then later not in humans? Or fails the one of the clinical phase trials. Or isn't safe. Drug companies fail. Even if something is promising initially, doesn't make it a slam dunk. Billions can be spent only to have a potential drug sunk by one of the trials. There are absolute risks. There are tough decisions to be made on which looks most promising and given that money and time and researchers aren't infinite, you have to make the calls on what looks most promising.
  - InvisibleCities 7y ago
    The questions and issues you pose are real, but they apply equally regardless of whether the decisions about research funding are made by for-profit pharmaceutical corporations or a panel of government experts. I posit that the latter is preferable because they are accountable to the public, whereas the former are accountable only to their shareholders and profitability metrics.
- aaavl2821 7y ago
  It is not true that the vast majority of early stage research is funded by the government. The NIH spends $30-35B a year on research, the top ~15 pharma companies spend $70B+, and about half of that is on early stage R&D. VCs invest $10-20B / year and most of that is early stage as well
nathanvanfleet 7y ago
Not so sure why you landed on the "don't bother curing AIDs" argument but ok. I think that ultimately what you are saying is "if there is no profit motive guiding research we won't know what to spend money on." My answer to that is to allocate money for research based on the impact of the solution. So ultimately how many people are affected or how seriously people are effected, and not how much money you might be able to make. We currently have problems with drug companies not even making life-saving drugs that exist already because there are only a handful of people suffering from those particular diseases.
- droffel 7y ago
  I wasn't intending to single out a particular condition, just labelled a few large-scale areas of active research and development.

fallingfrog 7y ago

Can’t possibly be any worse than it is now, with Lyme disease still having no vaccine while billions of dollars are plowed into boner pills.

ChrisLomont 7y ago
Maybe one is harder to solve?
mattkrause 7y ago
The initial "boner pill" was also discovered entirely by accident--it was originally meant to be a hypertension/angina drug. While it wasn't very good for that, it did have a...marked side-effect, which Pfizer ran with.

InvisibleCities 7y ago

>The big issue I see here is the proper allocation of this earmarked funding. The overwhleming majority of exploratory, pre-clinical, and early-phase clinical research is already funded by government grants, particularly from the CDC and NIH. To the extent that this is a "problem", it is one the system already faces. Personally, I would prefer that research funding decisions are made by public officials that are at least nominally accountable to the electorate over ruthless capitalists who are accountable only to their shareholders.

aantix 7y ago
>The overwhleming majority of exploratory, pre-clinical, and early-phase clinical research is already funded by government grants, particularly from the CDC and NIH. The overwhelming number of SAAS prototypes are made by engineers on the weekends - just take a few of those, and $$$, profit. ... Of course not. Exploratory, initial research is not the same as being successful at bringing a drug to market. Who decides what research to follow? It's successful in animal models, but then later not in humans? Or fails the one of the clinical phase trials. Or isn't safe. Drug companies fail. Even if something is promising initially, doesn't make it a slam dunk. Billions can be spent only to have a potential drug sunk by one of the trials. There are absolute risks. There are tough decisions to be made on which looks most promising and given that money and time and researchers aren't infinite, you have to make the calls on what looks most promising.
- InvisibleCities 7y ago
  The questions and issues you pose are real, but they apply equally regardless of whether the decisions about research funding are made by for-profit pharmaceutical corporations or a panel of government experts. I posit that the latter is preferable because they are accountable to the public, whereas the former are accountable only to their shareholders and profitability metrics.
aaavl2821 7y ago
It is not true that the vast majority of early stage research is funded by the government. The NIH spends $30-35B a year on research, the top ~15 pharma companies spend $70B+, and about half of that is on early stage R&D. VCs invest $10-20B / year and most of that is early stage as well

nathanvanfleet 7y ago

Not so sure why you landed on the "don't bother curing AIDs" argument but ok. I think that ultimately what you are saying is "if there is no profit motive guiding research we won't know what to spend money on." My answer to that is to allocate money for research based on the impact of the solution. So ultimately how many people are affected or how seriously people are effected, and not how much money you might be able to make. We currently have problems with drug companies not even making life-saving drugs that exist already because there are only a handful of people suffering from those particular diseases.

droffel 7y ago
I wasn't intending to single out a particular condition, just labelled a few large-scale areas of active research and development.