The reason why $1m/yr isn't enough isn't because the pharma companies are just too greedy. It's because conducting the clinical trial required to get them throu

The reason why $1m/yr isn't enough isn't because the pharma companies are just too greedy. It's because conducting the clinical trial required to get them through regulation is so massively expensive that they can't make anything at all at those revenue levels. Maybe it's time we back up and rethink what we really want here. It seems like the root cause is the highly risk-adverse regulation environment. The Government could take a bigger role in drug/vaccine development, but it seems unlikely that getting the Government more involved will result in a faster-moving and less risk-adverse development system that can rapidly apply sufficient resources to address a sudden threat, and then follow through with the development even after the immediate threat has already abated. It seems like the solution is to make the regulatory/approval environment less strict and expensive instead. That will allow anyone who develops drugs, whether large or small private companies or Government agencies, to get them to the public more rapidly.