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Comment by ed25519FUUU | Hacker News Reader

If it cures late stage cancer a few million per treatment would actually be a bargain.

Edit: I have no clue why people would rather something not exist than for something to exist but for it to be too expensive.

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Considering that no, we dont have a few million per person than no, its not really a "bargain" unless you mean in the context of a pact with the devil.

Not everyone has cancer. And the price is sort of likely to come down if there is a technique that reliably treats cancer.

You can't just multiply the cost for 1 person by the number of people in the population. If it's mass produced it will be a lot cheaper.

e.g. if you want to pay a chemist to synthesise Aspirin in a lab for you it will be very expensive. But it costs pennies in the store.

That's only true if you can use the same aspirin as many other people. If the specific substance needs to be adjusted to your specific tumor, it may remain extremely expensive for a long time - until it becomes a technician's job to find your specific cancer signature and synthesize the drug from it.

In this case "aspirin" is the equipment/software/education needed to perform this treatment; not the mRNA itself.

Yes, this is what I meant by it being the technician's job. But building out a new commodity specialist job out of this new technology takes a lot more time than it takes to ramp up production of a regular drug.

Well it depends why it costs a few million per person. If the production of the vaccine takes thousands of tons of coal and hundreds of pounds of bark of a slow-growing tree then yes, we don't have that per person. But if the current million dollar price is to enrich some pharma investors then there's nothing to say that society needs to find $100 trillion to enrich someone.

Sure, but that doesn't make it any more affordable for the average person.

Back-of-envelope numbers: US GDP per capita * US life expectancy is about 5 million dollars. Healthcare is maybe 18% of GPD and climbing, call it a million a person and rising. A majority (but not a huge one) is government spending.

I don't exactly know the breakdown, but it must skew towards the old & sick -- like cancer patients. It's not inconceivable that million-dollar cancer treatments could become widespread.

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