Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by selfhoster11 on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @05:17AM (#25644020)

Medicine development should be sponsored by the government anyway. Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it. This is an unconscionable status quo.

Public funding is fine for when your end-goal is known. In medicine, the end-goal is known: cure/manage condition X, which will save lives or improving quality of life of sufferers.

Optimising for patentable, innovative techniques is no longer a distraction (because those aren't needed to "protect your investment"). Optimising for ongoing therapy rather than a one-off/infrequent cure is no longer a distraction because you already got your money from the government and ain't getting any more. You can just focus on getting the job done quickly, with the cheapest techniques available (though boring they might be), and with the cheapest possible total cost of running the therapy start-to-end.

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Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by nickpp on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @06:01AM (#25644231)

> Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it.

And still, Moderna and BioNTech came up with vaccines for COVID-19, not therapies.

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Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by selfhoster11 on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @06:13AM (#25644316)

That's a great development which I welcome whole-heartedly, but I don't think this diminishes my broader argument. There are still many conditions besides COVID-19 that only have a therapy available but no cure because of business reasons.

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Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by adwn on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @06:41AM (#25644502)

> There are still many conditions besides COVID-19 that only have a therapy available but no cure because of business reasons.

Name three, and give reasons to believe that there's no cure for business reasons. If you can't name at least three (of the "many conditions"), then how can you be so sure of this?

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Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by breck on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @11:53AM (#25647450)

#1) Psychedelics/psilocybin for mental health. Cost basically $0 to produce but the US Mental Health industry was a $225B industry in 2019. Now though big pharma sees the writing on the wall, so is inventing patented variations (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/09/9445723...) because otherwise these natural substances that people have been taking for thousands of years wouldn't be "safe".

#2) Oxycontin. We have far better cures for short-term pain management. A 1996 internal email from Sackler: "get an audience for our patent infringement suits so that we are feared as a tiger with claws, teeth and balls, and build some excitement with prescribers that OxyContin Tablets is [sic] the way to go.15" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5234149/)

#3) Unnecessary procedures (440k/deaths year from medical errors -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5234149/)

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Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by nickpp on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @01:26PM (#25648947)

1) Psilocybin research was, and it probably still is in most of the world, made ILLEGAL by governments. Another causality of the war on drugs, who wrongly imprisoned thousands and caused countless victims so that a few politicians get re-elected.

2) > We have far better cures

So you’re saying there are cures. Great then. Please re-read the gp's question. For 3) as well...

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Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by m4rtink on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @06:18AM (#25644347)

I don't think this is a good counterexample given the very specific circumstances involved & clear requirements to get a vorking COVID vaccine ASAP.

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Re:Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor by nickpp on Tuesday January 05, 2021 @07:17AM (#25644749)

OK, do you have some examples (not counter) then?

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