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I'm not familiar with Effective Altruism, but a takeaway as a tech person working in the clinical trial field: Most drugs go to market with the idea of being e

I'm not familiar with Effective Altruism, but a takeaway as a tech person working in the clinical trial field: Most drugs go to market with the idea of being effective, e.g. treating as many people / conditions as possible. This leads to a problem that most people deal with a slightly different problem from the next person, so you just end up with large groups of small numbers of people who are essentially overlooked, because they're not profitable enough to make a drug or treatment for. This class is called "orphan drugs" Yes, this is mostly "how the industry / capitalism" works, but that's the point. By measuring how effective altruism is, and by only doing the things that are most effective, you'll essentially end up with many "orphan" categories at the end.

hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
“Efficiency” isn’t a universally, objectively better goal, but it’s what technocrats focus on. There are many other equally good (and often conflicting) possible goals: sufficiency, diversity, happiness, regret, etc. The current economy focuses on efficiency because it’s about infinite capital accumulation using finite resources, and that’s what benefits the people at the helm.
mxwsn 4y ago
Perhaps before 1983, but there's a strong case that since the Orphan Drug Act was passed in the US, orphan drugs are overincentivized and a massive misallocation of resources [0]. Orphan drugs represent nearly half of FDA approved drugs in some recent years and come with huge tax benefits, near monopoly conditions, and typically the most outrageous prices. Maximizing quality-adjusted life years would be better achieved by incentivizing single-dose therapeutics for common ailments. Not the best example but the first that comes to mind is upcoming psychedelic therapy, which could have major potential, but is seen as having a broken business model because most people won't want more than one treatment. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/509506836/drugs-for-rare-diseases-have-become-uncommonly-rich-monopolies https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/5095068...

hcarvalhoalves 4y ago

“Efficiency” isn’t a universally, objectively better goal, but it’s what technocrats focus on. There are many other equally good (and often conflicting) possible goals: sufficiency, diversity, happiness, regret, etc. The current economy focuses on efficiency because it’s about infinite capital accumulation using finite resources, and that’s what benefits the people at the helm.

mxwsn 4y ago

Perhaps before 1983, but there's a strong case that since the Orphan Drug Act was passed in the US, orphan drugs are overincentivized and a massive misallocation of resources [0]. Orphan drugs represent nearly half of FDA approved drugs in some recent years and come with huge tax benefits, near monopoly conditions, and typically the most outrageous prices. Maximizing quality-adjusted life years would be better achieved by incentivizing single-dose therapeutics for common ailments. Not the best example but the first that comes to mind is upcoming psychedelic therapy, which could have major potential, but is seen as having a broken business model because most people won't want more than one treatment. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/509506836/drugs-for-rare-diseases-have-become-uncommonly-rich-monopolies https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/5095068...