However for children the number that die of infection in the UK is double that of cancer deaths - ( ~15% versus ~7% ) - and that's in an advanced economy.
Infection is a big problem.
In terms of barriers to making treatments - yes in part there is a problem with the right financial incentives - but it's not the only problem - finding molecules that simultaneously kill bacteria, won't be rapidly evolved around, and are safe to take isn't that easy. Then you have the problem of selectivity between bacteria - how many different sorts will it work with - 'good' verus 'bad' bacteria etc. Then you have the problem of being able to make the molecule at scale etc.
The good news is there is a constant bacteria on bacteria, fungus on bacteria chemical war going on - hence the paper.
The question is shouldn't we explore it more?
Put dangerous bacteria in contact with other bacteria, fungi, viruses, prisons, viroids, archaea and see what kill them, how and why?
Note from the paper - they stored the soil samples for a year on growth media before testing ( to allow any compunds to build up presumably ). That doesn't sound like a fast process.
Our knowledge of what's out there is quite biased by what grows well in the lab - probably less than 1% of all bacteria will grow on an agar plate.
Sanitation is the answer.
> ( ~15% versus ~7% ) - and that's in an advanced economy.
There were 1,507 infection related child deaths between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2022 (3 years); an overall rate of 4.20 deaths per 100,000 children per year. This was the equivalent of 15% of all child deaths in this period.
Overall, in 90% of the infection related deaths the child had an underlying health condition, including 68% who had a life-limiting condition (e.g., cerebral palsy), and 22% who had another underlying health condition (including prematurity). 10% had no underlying health condition. In children where infection provided a complete and sufficient explanation of death, nearly a quarter (24%) had no underlying health condition.
Source: https://www.ncmd.info/publications/child-death-infection/#:~...
Massive practical coordination problems, but I find the idea of consciously exploiting this "time dimension" really interesting.
They must be making some novel improvements, though. Those original patents from the '60s are long expired by now.
It's like the claim that pharma had tripled the price of a 100 year old drug(insulin) that the inventors had sold for only $1 and were now charging $450 a month for it.
Then you dig into the claims and you find out that, the original insulin is still available, it's new formulations that have the higher cost.
>Until now, the only so-called “Walmart insulin” you could get for a lower price (roughly $25 to $35 per vial) was the older, human versions of insulin — R (or Regular) insulin, N (which is Novolin, aka NPH insulin); and a 70/30 mix of the two other types. Those formulations have been around since the early 1980s, but they work much differently and are seen as much less reliable than the analog insulins that first started appearing in the later 1990s. https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/walmart-relion-novol...
But the new stuff works better, is faster acting and allows a freer lifestyle.
I agree that there is a problem with the pharma industry but lying about the problem to try and get change is not going to help the cause.
I don’t know that it’s helpful to have such a blunt and un-nuanced take.
Theres no “certain oligarchy” that holds a single patent on "chemotherapy" as a broad concept, as it encompasses various chemical treatments for cancer. specific chemotherapy drugs and methods are patented by pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, for example:
- NanOlogy LLC: holds a patent for a method involving injecting large surface area microparticle taxanes directly into the tumor, combined with systemic delivery of immunotherapeutic agents.
- Johns Hopkins University: assigned patent rights for a method related to cancer treatment to Becton-Dickinson & Company, which then sublicensed them to Baxter.
- University of Cincinnati Clermont College: has a patent for breakthrough chemotherapy technology involving nanocarriers.
- Northeastern University: reports a patented molecule, WYC-209, that eliminates cancer cells.
This sums up most of the problems with the late stage capitalism system we are forced to live in.
When I hear "{x} is not very profitable" I think people mean "we are not sure if we succeed doing {x} and it requires us to divert lots of resources from other things that we think would be more useful".
Pharma companies invest already huge amounts in drugs and many fail anyhow. Quote: "It takes 10 to 15 years and around US$1 billion to develop one successful drug. Despite these significant investments in time and money, 90% of drug candidates in clinical trials fail." (https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/opinions/031222/90-of-drug...)
> Whether because they don’t adequately treat the condition they’re meant to target or the side effects are too strong, many drug candidates never advance to the approval stage.
And that doesn't sound "successful" at all. How much money is sunk into R&D at the point of failure is the much more relevant statistic to consider. If the pharmaceutical industry wasn't wildly profitable, they'd be investing those billions elsewhere, leaving drugs to a slow-cooking niche.
If you are interested in the topic, for example for oncology: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... , to quote "Failed drug development in oncology incurs substantial expense. At an industry level, an estimated $50 billion to $60 billion is spent annually on failed oncology trials."
There is no "oracle" that says invest 50 million (or 100 million or 1 billion) in X or Y and it will succeed (in pharma or other domains). And this is not exclusively because of capitalism, it is because doing some things is hard.
When that question was more easily answered you could probably have pointed to macrophages.
Outright "communist" states like Cuba and Venezuela no longer have sponsors, and are sanctioned by the US, so they're exempt from having to prove that their economies could conceivably generate any innovation.
Right-wing "post-democratic" states like Russia and Hungary are, by some definition, capitalist, but you see no innovation there either. Presumably someone if not you could blame America for them being unable to innovate. One could equally say that their markets aren't free, because they're fully captured and manipulated by their respective mafia/oligarchies.
Ahem. Just like the so-called communist countries are.
Then of course there's China. Where capitalism is also a plaything of the governing power. Similarly, no major drug developments have come out of there. Although we did have a fantastic example recently of how not to manage a biolab doing gain of function research.
Pray tell, which countries without free markets do anything at all? I'm not holding my breath for North Korea to cure cancer, no matter how much of their GDP is spent trying to keep their Dear Leader alive.