4 ms·

DARPA is a sinkhole for money and brainpower that produces practically nothing of market value. The DARPA model is what's wrong with healthcare R&D. It is the

DARPA is a sinkhole for money and brainpower that produces practically nothing of market value. The DARPA model is what's wrong with healthcare R&D. It is the unavoidable nature of government programs to be very expensive and slow. The major medical advances will come from the private firms that minimize entanglement with the government.

aswanson 17y ago
I'm with you in principle on the nature of government programs, but the private sector is notoriously short-sighted. Witness big pharma's focus on weight loss, painkillers and erection maintanence well beyond active reproductive years. There needs to be some vision beyond short-term profits to incent drastic leaps.
- kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  Perhaps venture capital should given incentives. If there are breakthroughs coming they'll only happen through funded companies. The other possibility, which I'm sure is unpopular to utter around here, is that there are no cancer breakthroughs to be made in a reasonable time frame and the capital markets and big pharma are behaving quite rationally. Despite all the billions poured into cancer research over the last 30 years the advancements seem pretty weak, from my limited understanding. Apparently they use eight years cancer free as the mark to declare you cured. But then people often relapse and drop dead young not so long after that. At some point it might make sense to admit pouring more money into drug and treatment research is detracting from other pursuits. You could probably make a much bigger dent in cancer by studying preventive nutrition and how to make it widespread.
  - Retric 17y ago
    There has been a dramatic increase in the number of people with canser living 5+ years over the last 30 years. "The age-adjusted breast cancer mortality rate for U.S. white females dropped 6.8% from 1989 through 1993" That's fast. http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/88/21/1571 http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/88/21/15... Cancer has a single name, but it's really a wide range of different issues. Some forms of cancer are eleminated by taking drugs with minimal side effects others will still kill you. http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/06/first-human-trials-of-prostate-cancer-drug-shock-doctors/ http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/06/first-human-trials-of-prost...

aswanson 17y ago

I'm with you in principle on the nature of government programs, but the private sector is notoriously short-sighted. Witness big pharma's focus on weight loss, painkillers and erection maintanence well beyond active reproductive years. There needs to be some vision beyond short-term profits to incent drastic leaps.

kingkongrevenge 17y ago
Perhaps venture capital should given incentives. If there are breakthroughs coming they'll only happen through funded companies. The other possibility, which I'm sure is unpopular to utter around here, is that there are no cancer breakthroughs to be made in a reasonable time frame and the capital markets and big pharma are behaving quite rationally. Despite all the billions poured into cancer research over the last 30 years the advancements seem pretty weak, from my limited understanding. Apparently they use eight years cancer free as the mark to declare you cured. But then people often relapse and drop dead young not so long after that. At some point it might make sense to admit pouring more money into drug and treatment research is detracting from other pursuits. You could probably make a much bigger dent in cancer by studying preventive nutrition and how to make it widespread.
- Retric 17y ago
  There has been a dramatic increase in the number of people with canser living 5+ years over the last 30 years. "The age-adjusted breast cancer mortality rate for U.S. white females dropped 6.8% from 1989 through 1993" That's fast. http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/88/21/1571 http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/88/21/15... Cancer has a single name, but it's really a wide range of different issues. Some forms of cancer are eleminated by taking drugs with minimal side effects others will still kill you. http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/06/first-human-trials-of-prostate-cancer-drug-shock-doctors/ http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/06/first-human-trials-of-prost...