Therefore we need to heavily incentivize researchers in the public sphere (who don't necessarily have the same type of perpetual treatment motive), along with a

Therefore we need to heavily incentivize researchers in the public sphere (who don't necessarily have the same type of perpetual treatment motive), along with allowing the free market researchers to operate according to their own goals. It would be irrelevant that pharma companies benefit more from perpetual treatment if public research was a more effective balance against that. If pharma doesn't pursue a cure, and a cure is conceivable, then it would behoove academics to pursue it (as the acclaim, and hopefully financial incentive they'd receive would easily motivate them). However, due to the competition for public funding, people are less likely to go down an expensive and time consuming path like that. They're much more likely to pursue incremental discoveries that lead to continued funding rather than bet the farm on a longshot. The main problem, in my opinion, is that there simply isn't enough science funding.