Medical research guided by the idea of preventing disease rather than creating expensive life-long treatments, and prioritizing the diseases that cause the most amount of suffering rather than present the best opportunity for profit. And not just medicine, but just about any industry could benefit.
So, if you're looking to cure something you're going to struggle to find funding.
Don't worry though, the economy will survive.
And their family than learns who actually funds cancer research: they do.
It's funny because your statement was supposed to support the idea pharma only do good things but instead it exactly shows the failure mode of capitalism in medicine: when you get sick, its very often that you do not have the time or capacity to be a informed consumer and the entire premise of capitalism breaks down.
Sometimes the pendulum swings too far towards cynicism.
Nobody tell the multibillion dollar biotech industry…
And in case it needs to be pointed out, no, cures are massively profitable. If someone has a cure for a presently untreatable disease you will get money, you will make money, everyone will make more money and everyone will be better off.
Not the people who are currently making bank off of palliative care for that ailment. This absolutely creates perverse incentives that, while not ubiquitous, are hardly uncommon.
Meanwhile, a drug like viagra can be consumed several times a week for decades.
I don't think its pharma execs are sitting their blocking cures, but it is true that they will looks at risk/reward when deciding. If most drugs only have a very small chance of being approved (lets say 2%) and costs billions of dollars to move through the process - of course those that are needed over and over are going to be funded through research more.
I'm going to need see some numbers on this statement. Because from where I'm sitting, the potential market is every human on planet earth, which is a pretty large amount of sales.
Production costs of mRNA vaccines, as well, is quite low, with much of the cost spent so far spent on scaling.