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 lar

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.