our lives much better and safer is because of the boatloads of money that can be made from their development. Welcome to capitalism. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy solution. There is also a lot of financial risk involved. The drug companies and labs spend huge sums of money on many drugs that never make it to market. And sometimes a drug does get approved and unintended side effects raise their head and the companies get sued back to yesterday.
Let’s say a drug, or synthetic antivenin, makes it to market, but at a price that only patients/insurance companies in 1st world nations could ever dream of affording. Do we just ignore everyone else and let them die, or do you let (force?) the “rich” to subsidize them? It may be an undesirable situation, but what’s the solution?
That’s a sincere question. If you curtail what the scientists and labs can make, we will probably never see a cure for the several variations of cancer, etc., etc., etc.
The patents on these drugs expire and generic versions can be produced by other companies. See Advil/Ibuprofen, Coumadin/Warfarin, and on and on and on. If nobody steps up to make a generic version at a lower price, maybe it is really, really expensive to make.
It’s unfortunate that our society isn’t composed completely of altruistic individuals that don’t care if they make any money, but it isn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, something probably does need to change, but I don’t know what or how. Any ideas?