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Comment by plumeria | Hacker News Reader

Would a NASA-like agency that funds vaccine research but keeps the IP “open source” work as an alternative to regular pharma companies?

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We could do that. But generally businesses are better at allocating capital than government, and less and less research is funded by government these days so I don't think the government has a strong track record.

NASA gets funded because it provides access to space, which is strategic concern. Open-source medical IP is not, so I guess - no.

The air force has its own access to space. NASA gets funded because it is popular and the United States is a democracy.

Fair point on air force providing strategic access to space. As for democracy, heh, let's say it's open to interpretation ;).

Seems like eradicating disease and illness worldwide is a pretty strategic concern for humanity.

I guess it’s like climate change. We can’t beat our neighbors by solving it so who cares, but these feel like things our species is really gonna have to start solving. But maybe we won’t and we will just make life unnecessarily hard for most human beings, when we could be stopping climate change and eradicating AIDS.

As a human being, I totally get you. We should be doing much better than this. But, realistically, governments are responsible to their electorates only. As for the global humanity, first question is who's going to foot the bill and imagine global powers today coming to a consensus on that?!

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