You can't miss what doesn't exist
Jul. 5th, 2011 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupOne thing I think is important to note is that the scientist who first cultured Henrietta Lack's cells, Guy-something-something*, never made a dime off of the cells or the techniques he invented- his was a life that took money in and gave science out. Given how prevalent the cells are and that people will give them away, it seems like the companies selling them are really selling convenience, not the cells themselves. Which doesn't make it okay to steal them and cell them, but is noticeably better than stealing them for the express purpose of profit.
I also find it telling that Dr. Guy's fondest wish was to do to himself what he'd done to Henrietta: he was devastated when his cancer was so inoperable they didn't remove any cells at all, preventing him from creating his own cell line. Told he was definitely going to die, he volunteered himself for a bunch of not-yet-tested on humans research, purely to help science.
Would science progress faster if all scientists were like Guy, and there were no profit motive? It depends. I think when a lot of people think about this, they're envisioning transforming everyone who does medical research for money into someone who does it for love. That's a great thought, but it's not what's going to happen. What happens is everyone who's in it for profit goes to a different industry and we end up with less medicine. The only thing worse than a cure you can't afford is a cure that doesn't exist. And in 30 years the expensive cure will be cheap(er), but the non-existent cure is still non-existent.
So to prove that taking the profit motive out of medical research would be net-beneficial, you have to show that the friction caused by profit motives is greater than the benefit. And there is friction: it leads people to keep research a secret, slowing new discoveries. Coordination costs for treatments that require patents from multiple owners can quickly dwarf the potential profits, leading to a loss for everyone as no one gets money or treatment. And of course, the suffering or death of people who couldn't afford the medicine.
What does profit motive get us in return? Well, we can assume pharmaceutical companies wouldn't pursue products without them. It's pretty clear that they overinvest in lifestyle drugs, relative to the social optimum, because they can charge whatever the hell they want for them, without fear of photogenic cancer patients shaming them into offering it at a lower price. Researching new drugs is an expensive and failure-prone process: pharmaceutical companies look like they have high profits, but what they really have is highly variable profits with the unprofitable companies going out of business. it seems- is- tragic to watch someone die when there is a cure they can't afford, but I prefer that to a world where everyone dies because there's no incentive to create a cure. Right now we strike a compromise, letting companies earn profit on drugs for a while (I believe it's 32 years, but the clock starts ticking when the substance is patented, not when it's approved for use, so the functional life of a drug is much shorter than that), and I think that's a good middle ground, although I wouldn't know where to begin figuring out what the correct length of time is.
Is there a way to keep the benefits of the profit motive without the cost? Maybe. But I have to discuss more of the financing first.
*I'm not being cute, his first or possibly last name really is Guy
I also find it telling that Dr. Guy's fondest wish was to do to himself what he'd done to Henrietta: he was devastated when his cancer was so inoperable they didn't remove any cells at all, preventing him from creating his own cell line. Told he was definitely going to die, he volunteered himself for a bunch of not-yet-tested on humans research, purely to help science.
Would science progress faster if all scientists were like Guy, and there were no profit motive? It depends. I think when a lot of people think about this, they're envisioning transforming everyone who does medical research for money into someone who does it for love. That's a great thought, but it's not what's going to happen. What happens is everyone who's in it for profit goes to a different industry and we end up with less medicine. The only thing worse than a cure you can't afford is a cure that doesn't exist. And in 30 years the expensive cure will be cheap(er), but the non-existent cure is still non-existent.
So to prove that taking the profit motive out of medical research would be net-beneficial, you have to show that the friction caused by profit motives is greater than the benefit. And there is friction: it leads people to keep research a secret, slowing new discoveries. Coordination costs for treatments that require patents from multiple owners can quickly dwarf the potential profits, leading to a loss for everyone as no one gets money or treatment. And of course, the suffering or death of people who couldn't afford the medicine.
What does profit motive get us in return? Well, we can assume pharmaceutical companies wouldn't pursue products without them. It's pretty clear that they overinvest in lifestyle drugs, relative to the social optimum, because they can charge whatever the hell they want for them, without fear of photogenic cancer patients shaming them into offering it at a lower price. Researching new drugs is an expensive and failure-prone process: pharmaceutical companies look like they have high profits, but what they really have is highly variable profits with the unprofitable companies going out of business. it seems- is- tragic to watch someone die when there is a cure they can't afford, but I prefer that to a world where everyone dies because there's no incentive to create a cure. Right now we strike a compromise, letting companies earn profit on drugs for a while (I believe it's 32 years, but the clock starts ticking when the substance is patented, not when it's approved for use, so the functional life of a drug is much shorter than that), and I think that's a good middle ground, although I wouldn't know where to begin figuring out what the correct length of time is.
Is there a way to keep the benefits of the profit motive without the cost? Maybe. But I have to discuss more of the financing first.
*I'm not being cute, his first or possibly last name really is Guy
