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I don't think it's a regulation bug to require a study to approve a drug for a certain use. The bug is that we don't incentivize funding expensive studies to d

I don't think it's a regulation bug to require a study to approve a drug for a certain use. The bug is that we don't incentivize funding expensive studies to discover unpatentable (i.e. cheap) treatments. The minimum "patch" would be that the governments of the major drug markets decide that effort and discovery of applications count as a basis for patents. Then a drug maker could fund their studies based on which drug candidate is the most promising, not which is the most promising but also novel and thus patentable. Much better, would be to have the governments presiding over the major drug markets get together and create a proportional fund to cover studies for the public's benefit. The economics of that would be similar to private companies, but at least the profits would go towards further research.

deleted 4y ago
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BurningFrog 4y ago
> I don't think it's a regulation bug to require a study to approve a drug for a certain use. That's actually not how it works. When a drug is FDA approved for a certain use, doctors are free to prescribe it for anything the think it's useful for. This is called "off label" use, and is ~20% of prescriptions in the US. This "loophole" cures a lot of people! And there are some clinics who do use regular Ketamine for depression. The main problem for them is that insurance will not cover this usage. > The bug is that we don't incentivize funding expensive studies to discover unpatentable (i.e. cheap) treatments. This I agree with. Though I'd expect some philanthropic billionaire to get to that long before any governments would.