Yeah, but I’m still looking forward to the cervical cancer vaccine currently in clinical trials:
http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/results/cervical-cancer-vaccine1102
DSeid the idea isn’t that the research is not done at the highest level, it is that it is being done at all, it is being funded, and there is no conspiracy by Big Pharma to keep these things off the market. The only place where I think that financial incentives really kill research is with malaria, and that is a very bad thing and due to a number of factors (but I’ll admit mostly financial).
Of course there are market forces, I’m not denying it. Of course every scientists and little biotech wants to hit it big with a multi-billion dollar drug. But these problems don’t lead to a conspiracy, because there is also a lot of publicity, ego, and real honest-to-goodness scientific inquiry at all of the levels.
Furthermore, I hope that better practices by physicians in the field can abey some of these forces (restrained antibiotic therapy, using the best, cheapest drugs, etc.) It’s more of a pipe dream than anything, though.
If you look at the past 20 years of medicine, I think you will see that we have improved on all fronts, not just the profitable chronic management of disease. The OP posited that we aren’t curing diseases anymore. Others quickly chimed in and said that the easy diseases are all cured. I chimed in and said that we actually are tackling the harder ones as well, and we are doing a better job with prevention. I didn’t mean to imply that the world was perfect – in a better world, vaccine and prevention research would be the hottest fields out there – but that the system does produce cures and prevention right now, and financial incentive isn’t the only force out there.
edwino, no one had put forth any conspiricy theories. And diseases are all easy to cure in retrospect. At the time every disease is a difficult cure. I am certainly not claiming that there is no good research being aimed at “cures” today. Eva Luna’s post is one very good example. The Rotarians have been doing a bang-up job funding programs to eradicate polio. Stem cell research and gene therapy trials are also good examples, especially with all their tribulations and false starts.
But Big Pharma more and more controls what research get done, and the bottom line view does not bode well for funding basic research aimed at cures well. An MD-PhD freind of mine who left academia for a think tank job with a Big Pharma has explained it this way. He can sometimes get the company to fund his basic research questions, but only if can sell them on how it might lead to a blockbuster … not to a good product that will have real niche and save lives … a blockbuster. They are all looking for homeruns, not for solid singles or doubles.
Money may not be the prime motivator of most medical scientists, but they need the funding to get the job done. I think that my freind is motivated by intellectual curiousity number one and good of humankind a close second. But he doesn’t get to sign the checks.
Anybody who works in frontline health care (nurses, doctors, etc.) wants to see everybody well for the remainder of their lives, until they die in their sleep painlessly, but without significant limitations on their activities or quality of life as they approach death. Unfortunately, the state of the art is not there yet, so I won’t be able to take down my shingle and go fishing anytime soon. As a cancer doctor, I can tell you that telling a patient that I cannot cure what ails them and (s)he will die of this disease is difficult, each and every time. It does not get easier with time or experience, and I would be ecstatic if somebody could come up with cures for the incurable cases, whether or not if involved my type of treatment. I’d be delighted to retrain to do something else, if my expertise were no longer needed.
Much research is being done on the myriad of health conditions that affect length and quality of life. There are financial considerations that affect how much research gets done in a given area, as evidenced by previous posts, but I do not believe anybody is suppressing research results that could improve people’s lifespans or quality of life. In some areas we get major breakthroughs, but in most we get gradual improvements in diagnosis and therapy building on previous research results.