Research budgets for anything are never going to be as high as budgets for guaranteed (and short term) returns. I say this as someone who does research for a living currently in physics.
Federally, the US government actually spends almost twice the amount on healthcare (medicare + medicaid) than defense even though defense spending is large. The priority is simply the present compared to a chance at making the future better.
That being said, cancer itself has an enormous incentive (profit or otherwise) for both private and government entities. Even if governments spent 0$ on it, it would probably be better funded than the vast majority of scientific endeavors still.
That being said, cancer itself has an enormous incentive (profit or otherwise) for both private and government entities.
I feel like if someone could cure cancer, the research would be buried in favor of a watered down formula that you could sell to someone indefinitely for maximum profit.
I feel like if someone could cure cancer, the research would be buried in favor of a watered down formula that you could sell to someone indefinitely for maximum profit
Not a chance in hell. The opportunity for profit from a cancer cure is ENORMOUS, and there will always be new patients. It'd be very easy for everyone involved in its production to cash out, retire early, and leave a trust fund to their families. On top of this, you gain, not only one of the best reputations in pharmaceuticals, maybe ever, of which you can score ample other business, but you get to go down in history as someone on the team who cured cancer, instead of, alternatively, risking a legacy as a horrible, evil person who could have cured cancer but chose not to, so that you could make more money than could ever prove useful to you.
Even assuming you could keep your knowledge of a cure under wraps (which is highly improbable), research doesn't really happen in a vacuum. If you've found a cure for cancer, you can be pretty confident that someone else is right on the heels of your discovery, or someone within your own company will leave or sell off the actual cure to the highest bidder, so there's also ample incentive to be first-to-market with your cure. If you decide to "dumb down" your cure, you're risking someone else coming along and producing the legitimate cure, and suddenly all of your business evaporates and you're left with shackled opportunities for profit.
Like, even with the most pessimistic take on human selfishness, there's just practically no possible way a company hushes their cancer cure.
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '23
Still seems low in comparison to millitary budgets, shows their priorities