Is it possible to know, for any one medical cause, how much money is devoted to finding a cure vs. treating symptomes? While both are important, you have to wonder if the cure is even sought in this profit-driven world.
The enormous potential for great profit in cures for common conditions leads me to believe that it’s limitations in our abilities to achieve them as well as finite resources that explain why such cures are not yet available.
I don’t think many would be willing to take all the money currently spent on, say, treating breast cancer (prolonging lives as well as curing the disease in many women) and throwing all of it into research for The Cure which is likely unattainable given our current abilities and knowledge.
I hear numbers thrown about regarding specific diseases. Research is being conducted for specific types of cancer for example. One problem in such a calculation is the nature of research itself. Some research is general without regard to a specific illness. Research in nanotechnology might have outcomes that affect digital technology as well as bio-science. Maybe the digital technology would ultimately result in better medical diagnostic equipment. So your best guess as to the total spent would include the specific diagnosis designated expense plus a wild guess as to a portion of the rest of research expenses.
Great post. One thing that comes to mind: Who would ever have thought that nuclear magnetic resonance, an esoteric subject of atomic physics, would become the basis of an extremely useful tool of medical diagnostic equipment?
What would you consider research aimed at finding a cure vs. one that is aimed at treating the symptoms? What’s your understanding of medical research in general?
Suppose a screen reveals a receptor on a type of cancer cell that, when agonized, induces the death of those cells. Research is undertaken to find a molecule that can act as an agonist at that receptor and subsequent clinical trials run to determine how effective it is at treating the cancer. But as it turns out, only 50% of the cancer cells express that receptor in high enough numbers to result in cell death. Was that research aimed at a cure? They haven’t cured the disease and there was no certainty that they were going to, but it was theoretically possible.
What would you consider a cure? If a drug is discovered that reduces the lifetime morbidity and mortality of a disease to zero and has minimal side-effects, but needs to be taken every day, or month, or year, is that a cure?
For that matter, does aspirin cure headaches? It makes a headache go away, but they often come right back.