3 ms·

> Lot's of ways - just look at the job pages of Cancer institutes/hospitals, Universities and research institutes or biotech/pharma companies. I'd be slightly

> Lot's of ways - just look at the job pages of Cancer institutes/hospitals, Universities and research institutes or biotech/pharma companies. I'd be slightly weary of putting "pharma companies" in the same list, or at least not without the following warning: Pharma companies are still companies. That means: research will be often killed because it's not in the company's financial interest to pursue it further: if your drug is better but the market for it is small, your drug won't make it. It is not unheard for a company's plan for cancer to be "we'll wait until someone else does it and then we'll buy them". Pharma companies still fund their own research, and they are still putting out new, more effective drugs in the market. They probably pay better, too. But if you're making a career change because you're idealistic about "making the world a better place", a pharma company might not be the best move.

natechols 7y ago
> if your drug is better but the market for it is small, your drug won't make it As written, this is not what actually happens. The only way to know if a drug is "better" is to run expensive (and risky) clinical trials on it. Big Pharma wouldn't even bother going that far if the market isn't sufficient to make a profit - given the extremely high rate of failure in clinical trials, they never would have started the program in the first place. I realize this may seem like a minor semantic quibble but there is an awful lot of disinformation like "Big Pharma could cure cancer but it's not profitable" floating around.
DrScientist 7y ago
There are good and bad in every category - some academics make stuff up, and academia can be incredibly competitive, backstabbing and plain nasty, driven by large egos getting on hype bandwagons - but I wouldn't define all academia like that. Academia is competitive - in faces the same stresses and temptations to create cosy cabals to protect from the winds of competition - just like, perhaps if not more so than say the pharma industry. Similarly, there are pharma companies that are science rather than sales led ( ie driven by the belief that if you make a cure for cancer then the sales will take care of itself, rather than making a me-too and winning on sales strategy ). And in both, the experience at the coal face is often the same - colleagues working together on a common goal, oblivious of the high level politics. Also spivs that buy an off-patent drug and jack up the price because they know nobody else is making the drug - those are not 'big pharma' companies - those are the same type of cold eyed bean counters that buy companies for their assets and sack everyone. > It is not unheard for a company's plan for cancer to be "we'll wait until someone else does it and then we'll buy them". Yep - but not all - otherwise there would be nothing to buy. Back to the original point - by definition - the ones recruiting scientists are the ones trying.... Also let me nail the 'curing cancer' isn't profitable mis-conception. Putting on a cold 'spock' logic - the great thing about the health care industry is that if you cure a patient of one disease they will come back eventually with something else - the only patients that don't come back are dead ones. ie the reason health care in the US is so expensive is because it's unlimited post retirement spend, and health care is much better so people don't just die of an infection or heart attack, but live much longer, developing a large number of conditions that need to be managed as they slowly fall apart. Saving people from one thing, means they will get two things later one - it is long term good business. Note I'm not saying that's the explicit plan - just if you have a conspiracy theory these companies are driven by just profit, then curing cancer isn't a commercial problem at all.

natechols 7y ago

> if your drug is better but the market for it is small, your drug won't make it As written, this is not what actually happens. The only way to know if a drug is "better" is to run expensive (and risky) clinical trials on it. Big Pharma wouldn't even bother going that far if the market isn't sufficient to make a profit - given the extremely high rate of failure in clinical trials, they never would have started the program in the first place. I realize this may seem like a minor semantic quibble but there is an awful lot of disinformation like "Big Pharma could cure cancer but it's not profitable" floating around.

DrScientist 7y ago

There are good and bad in every category - some academics make stuff up, and academia can be incredibly competitive, backstabbing and plain nasty, driven by large egos getting on hype bandwagons - but I wouldn't define all academia like that. Academia is competitive - in faces the same stresses and temptations to create cosy cabals to protect from the winds of competition - just like, perhaps if not more so than say the pharma industry. Similarly, there are pharma companies that are science rather than sales led ( ie driven by the belief that if you make a cure for cancer then the sales will take care of itself, rather than making a me-too and winning on sales strategy ). And in both, the experience at the coal face is often the same - colleagues working together on a common goal, oblivious of the high level politics. Also spivs that buy an off-patent drug and jack up the price because they know nobody else is making the drug - those are not 'big pharma' companies - those are the same type of cold eyed bean counters that buy companies for their assets and sack everyone. > It is not unheard for a company's plan for cancer to be "we'll wait until someone else does it and then we'll buy them". Yep - but not all - otherwise there would be nothing to buy. Back to the original point - by definition - the ones recruiting scientists are the ones trying.... Also let me nail the 'curing cancer' isn't profitable mis-conception. Putting on a cold 'spock' logic - the great thing about the health care industry is that if you cure a patient of one disease they will come back eventually with something else - the only patients that don't come back are dead ones. ie the reason health care in the US is so expensive is because it's unlimited post retirement spend, and health care is much better so people don't just die of an infection or heart attack, but live much longer, developing a large number of conditions that need to be managed as they slowly fall apart. Saving people from one thing, means they will get two things later one - it is long term good business. Note I'm not saying that's the explicit plan - just if you have a conspiracy theory these companies are driven by just profit, then curing cancer isn't a commercial problem at all.