this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
75 points (95.2% liked)
Asklemmy
44149 readers
1457 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Here's a bit of hope for you, scientists have figured out how to trick the body into producing any protein or antibody they want, through technology like gene therapy and mRNA vaccines. We're about to cure a lot of diseases that used to be 100% fatal. Diseases that kill kids and adults alike.
Most things seem to be getting worse these days, but at least we're making progress in other areas.
Too bad those advances will be monetized as hard as possible and limited to those that can afford it.
Unfortunately there's a lot of truth in that statement, especially in the case of rare disease. It's really difficult to convince a company to spend billions to develop a treatment that will only cure 1 in 100,000 people without letting them charge an arm and a leg, and giving them a very long exclusivity deal so they can continue to charge high prices. So much of that cost to develop is due to the dozens of other failed drugs and formulations they tried on their way to success.
I don't have a solution for the problem, and I'm always a little suspicious of anyone who claims it's easy to solve. I think the UK has a decent idea, the NHS basically decides if the cost of a drug will be covered by insurance by comparing the expected benefit and the current cost. If the ratio is too skewed, they refuse to cover the medication. In theory, this should be an incentive for a company to charge less. In practice, it leads to some companies choosing not to market in the UK.
Thanks, that's good to hear. New scientific breakthroughs always inspire hope, at least for me, especially when they save lives.
That's great and all but we're going to be needing food and air conditioning.