this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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There is a conspiracy on this. Pharma companies aren't interested in curing cancer because it would rob them of many millions of life long "customers" who are reliant on their products. The majority of their R&D budget goes into specific treatments of symptoms, or treatments focused on specific types of cancer rather than a fundamental cure. Universities and charities do the research into the cure but they're nowhere near as well funded. This is a pretty well-documented fact, sadly.
It's not exactly unbelievable either, given the behaviour of other corporations like Nestlé, Shell, BP etc.
Edit: Huh this turns out to be quite controversial. I remain unconvinced by your arguments. Just for the record, I'm not a conspiracist, but I do believe there are conspiracies, and I believe this is one of them. It's a mundane one, a lot like the conspiracy to keep everyone burning planet-killing fossil fuels or lung-destroying cigarettes.
It's been...Reddit, talking with you.
It's utter nonsense. R&D on treatment is generally a safer investment than a full cure that may not pan out at all.
But think of it like this: the first company that does cure cancer will easily out-compete other pharmaceutical companies. That's why we do in fact have cures for a variety of cancer types.
And it's not like people will stop getting cancer once a cure is found. You can keep selling the cure you can patent! That would push any other pharma company that only focuses on treatment out of the market immediately.
The focus of research should be on telomere therapy, because that's the most likely area to develop an all-cure. Yet it receives a fraction of the budget other therapies receive. Most telomere research is funded by grants from charities or public funds. I couldn't find any research funded by private bodies (which isn't to say there is none).
Look, if people could get a jab that vaccinated them against cancer, the companies selling the current myriad treatments, often lifelong, would stand to lose a huge chunk of their income. I don't think that's in any way magical thinking. The next premise is that the divvying up of R&D funding will therefore never be in favour of an easy, outright cure, because the people who make those decisions aren't doctors or cancer patients, and their role is purely to increase the value of the company, over the short and long term. Yes, the first company to do it would destroy the profits of any competitors, but it would reduce its own in the process.
So we have: 1: a one-time vaccination or other easy therapy to prevent or cure cancer wouldn't be in the interests of any company making lots of money off a vast treatment range, and
2: the people who allocate funding aren't going to research the treatment in 1) out of the goodness of their hearts. The outcome is a much slower general progression towards a cancer cure than is ideal. It does amount to a conspiracy, but only because of the pressures of the free market. It's the same kind of mass stupidity the human race displays when it comes to climate change.
I'm honestly interested to see if you refute either of the two points above, or their link/outcome. I genuinely would love to be wrong about this.
Nope, while telomers and general aging are important. It has nothing or little to do with most diseases. You say the people making decision are not cancer patients. That is not really true. 20 % of the population die of cancer. 1/5 of the pharma management dies of cancer, 1/5 of the spouses of these people die of cancer. 1/5 of the children of these people die of cancer. It is in the direct egoistic interest of these people to find cancer cures.
Ok, so if the people making the decision were all patients or the relatives of patients, and they were also just regular people with normal working class jobs, do you think the amount of money put into research would increase or decrease?
I don't know, many societies don't want to discuss how much worth is one additional year of life for example. I also don't know if it would improve output if research and development and manufacturing of drugs would be completely state run. But the I think the ruling elites are almost all patients in one form or the other. Have you ever seen a completely healthy elderly politician? If it only taking pills against high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. Or maybe they have a new hip or knee joint.