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Comment by eagsalazar2 | Hacker News Reader

Here is the big question: How profitable would this be for big pharma if it really worked? If the answer isn't an enormous number, this isn't going anywhere beyond the researchers who published their work.

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If the cost to the UK is reported to be 42 billion per year [0] (need to do more verification on this) and I quickly couldn’t see a figure for the US, then I believe there is an argument for a nationalisation policy where the government writes a very large cheque to the company and then makes the treatment free to everyone.

A bit socialisation of health care for some but the benefits to the economy may well be worth the trade alone, never mind the individual benefits

[0] https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/blog/how-much-does-dementia-ca...

The problem is, you're not just writing a large cheque in return for a working treatment. You're writing a large cheque to roll the dice on some research that might (and probably won't, statistically) result in a working treatment. So you need a very large cheque so that you can fund multiple research projects in the hopes that one of them will give you a treatment. Even then, there's the possibility that none of them will work and you've got nothing to show for any of the money spent.

To play the devils advocate, does that take into the "cost" to the government if pensioners are living longer because Alzheimers was cured? I could easily see this turning into a debate behind politicians closed doors of

"If "x" % of the population has their life is extended an average of "y" years, how much more does that cost in pension payouts over the life of the individual vs the medical savings from curing Alzheimers?"

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