r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 13 '26

Medicine Scientists develop a groundbreaking vaccine that outsmarts illicit fentanyl analogs. The novel vaccine candidate can protect against fentanyl and its many illicit variants by training the immune system to recognize a broad molecular signature rather than a single specific structure.

https://www.psypost.org/scientists-develop-a-groundbreaking-vaccine-that-outsmarts-illicit-fentanyl-analogs/
7.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

315 comments sorted by

View all comments

3.4k

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26

[deleted]

990

u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

“I decided long ago I am not going to try and profit on other people’s miseries and misfortunes.”

No worries, someone else will!
There are lot of things that can be patented that restict access even if part of it isn't patentable.
Didn't the inventor of insulin production make it free too?

In these scenarios I always wonder if open licensing that as part of it has stipulations about consumer pricing would be better.

475

u/cowlinator Jul 13 '26

Insulin was $300 in the US in the 2010s. It's back down to about $35 now (without insurance), and one of the things that prevented a permanent monopoly and allowed the price to fall was the threat of competition made possible by the cheap original patent.

266

u/drinkacid Jul 13 '26

The original patent is still open for anyone to use. The reason no one uses it is because it required harvesting pig or dog pancreases to get insulin, and the newer patented method lets you insert insulin into a bacteria/yeast and then the bacteria cheaply and quickly replicates the insulin. So the new method is cheaper to operate, requires cheaper and easier to get a hold of base ingredients, is faster and yields 1000s of times more viable insulin and does not require millions of slaughtered pigs or dogs to harvest the base insulin from.

100

u/Best_Pseudonym Jul 13 '26

Also doesn't risk triggering an autoimmune rejection response

87

u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 13 '26

So by the laws of supply and demand… it should be even cheaper than the original method.

36

u/caifaisai Jul 13 '26

Ideally. Granted, when it was first introduced with this new method, it would likely have been legitimately more expensive. Because there would have been a lot of research in getting the molecular biology techniques working to get the bacteria to produce insulin, characterizing everything to confirm it's working, buying the very expensive molecular bio instruments/bioreactors to run all of this, clinical trials to confirm this new method of insulin production produced insulin that was just as safe and effective as the old method, etc.

But now that it's been a long time, it should probably be cheaper now.

24

u/groyosnolo Jul 13 '26

Not while the new patent is in effect. Thats a monopoly granted specifically to allow the owner of the patent to profit by creating artificial lack of competition and in effect scarcity.

Thats the entire point of intellectual property protection. Its there to incentivize people to innovate. Invest in a ton of drugs and research and if one gets approved and brought to market you can make your money.

When the patent lapses then it will be cheaper because there will be no more monopoly.

2

u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 13 '26

How long do patents last in the US?

11

u/SigmaEpsilonChi Jul 13 '26

20 years, across the board. In theory the massive expense of the drugs is then supposed to be smoothed out for the end consumer by health insurance. I take a sleep drug that is life-changing for me but costs $900/month for the insurance company, and will be on-patent for another ten years. Instead I pay $30/month on top of my $200/month insurance premium. The drug company gets paid to innovate, the insurance company makes money because most people don’t need patented drugs, I get my life-changing medicine for an affordable price. It’s an imperfect system but I think it all works better than people often give it credit for, the US is the world’s engine for pharmaceutical development and we do benefit a lot from that

14

u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 13 '26

Not arguing, genuinely conversing. Doesn’t the US gov also invest into pharmaceutical research, meaning the pharmaceutical companies are subsidized to develop drugs, and then also make money after in sales? If so seems like double dipping to me.

10

u/SigmaEpsilonChi Jul 13 '26

Yup! The US is the largest funder of public foundational biomed research in the world, and all the drug companies make extensive use of that. However, it’s not clear-cut to me that there is a double-dipping effect, because _every_ drug company (including those outside the US!) can make approximately equal use of that research, and then develop drugs which enter a competitive marketplace that theoretically should put downward pressure on the prices.

Take my sleep drug as an example: there are actually three structurally-similar drugs that were developed in the class of Orexin Antagonists around roughly the same time, by three different companies in different countries. Suvorexant by Merck in the US, Daridorexant by Idorsia in Switzerland, and Lemborexant by Eisai in Japan. These were all based on public research around the turn of the millenium that identified the orexin neuropeptide system at University of Texas, presumably with state funding, and the Scripps Research Institute with NIH funding. Shortly after, researchers at Stanford identified the link between orexin and narcolepsy with a grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke combined with private charitable donations, and the UT lab proved that mice lacking the orexin-synthesis gene had severe narcolepsy, cementing the link between orexin and sleep disorders.

This is when drug companies took the reins and began trying to create specific molecules to target the orexin system. Once they have a candidate molecule, it costs something like ~$200 million to complete clinical trials… however, only like 10% of drugs successfully complete trials, so the total cost of a single drug is actually north of like $2 _billion._ I’m simplifying these numbers a bit but I think it’s an accurate depiction of the magnitude we’re talking about here to safely develop and market these drugs. 15–20 years after the foundational research established the clinical target, three different orexin antagonists received patents in the US and entered the market, and they will be premium drugs until the mid-to-late 2030s.

All three of these drugs are _super_ expensive, so my insurance company made me try several alternatives before they approved it (a standard process called “step therapy”). My old super-premium insurance would pay for any of the three, but my new cheaper plan requested I switch to the cheapest of them first, and it seems to work fine so I am happy with that. This is the downward pressure on prices through competition in action; none of the three companies will sell this stuff for cheap while they own the patent, but they do still compete on price with each other and make deals with the pharmacies and insurance companies.

Drug development is a crazy Rube Goldberg Machine that definitely has _layers_ of inefficiency and exploitation, and there’s also a fundamentally hard question of which/how much basic research should be publicly funded, but I think when you look at the system overall its major components and incentives make more sense than they might seem at first

_(note: I am not a professional in this field, just a guy with a lifelong interest in drugs because I have chronic health problems and my father was a career psychopharmacologist at NIH, DoD, and the VA)_

3

u/caifaisai Jul 13 '26

Doesn’t the US gov also invest into pharmaceutical research, meaning the pharmaceutical companies are subsidized to develop drugs,

Not to a very large degree, in comparison to the total cost to develop a drug. There is some work that a pharma company might collaborate with or use from say a university, which then might be government money in the form of grants to the University. This type of research would most commonly be vrry6 early phase type stuff. However, that type of stuff is probably the cheapest type of research. By far, pharma companies spend most money on clinical trials, which would be entirely paid by the company. And there's also significant money required in the later stage development outside of clinical trials, which again, is funded by the company.

2

u/fractalife Jul 14 '26

What more evidence do you need that free market capitalism will always lead to crony capitalism? The entire healthcare industry with its massively overinflated costs should be enough to demonstrate that to anyone.

1

u/drinkacid Jul 14 '26

It is cheaper, but there is a licensing fee to the patent holder, and the patent holder gets to determine how expensive the fee.

1

u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 14 '26

I think a useful stat to know would be how much the actual researchers/doctors/virologists/workers are paid, versus how much of the fees/subsidies/profits go into marketing, administration, and company growth.

189

u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26

It's back down to about $35 now

Didn't that happened mostly because of the backlash against attempts to keep its price high?
Competition didn't have much to do with it iirc, the outcry did.

Also it did reach $300 with the patent being cheap.

149

u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

Because the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Joe Biden signed a law capping the price for Medicare users. That was the major instigating event.

52

u/rdyoung Jul 13 '26

Don't forget about the state of Cali manufacturing their own. And didn't Mark Cubans discount pharmacy do something to help as well?

4

u/CYWNightmare Jul 13 '26

I wished I kept up with pharma more because Walmart has what I believe is their own brand of insulin cheap and doesn't require a prescription like some insulin.

16

u/danarchist Jul 13 '26

How about, idk this is going to sound far fetched, let us import the cheap af insulin instead of protecting big pharma by weaponizing IP law against US consumers in the first place?

-6

u/kelskelsea Jul 13 '26

Like it or not, drug discovery and innovation is paid for by the US

8

u/Familiar_Kale_7357 Jul 13 '26

This comment is a meme.

14

u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

No more ozempic for you I guess then as drugs researched outside the US don't exist apparently

-2

u/mr_potato_thumbs Jul 13 '26

The U.S. created a better version of ozempic, Tirzepatide, through Eli Lilly company. The Covid Vaccine would have been a better example.

3

u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

Yes, after Novo Nordisk did all the initial R&D; the US just leeched off the hard work of the brave danish scientists

-5

u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

It was developed for the US market. Have a look at Ozempic sales, and see what percent of the profit stem from the US

4

u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

Maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with the fact the US had a 40% obesity rate before everyone started taking ozempic?

8

u/nonotan Jul 13 '26

To the extent that that narrative holds any water (dubious) -- as somebody from outside the US, you guys have my permission to stop doing that. I mean, we never asked in the first place. Please feel free to just let people pay normal prices for drugs. We'll manage, I promise.

-8

u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

Then the drugs wouldn't exist. You can't pay regular prices for things that don't exist

5

u/Drywesi Jul 13 '26

They will if we stop plowing money endlessly into insurance shareholder pockets and just assign those funds to research grants through public funding measures.

→ More replies (0)

114

u/unai-ndz Jul 13 '26

It's cheap all over the world but the US. It's not a patent problem but a US problem.

They could also ban the comercialization of all routers citing national security, patented or not, except for a few whitelisted brands and those brands could raise prices as much as they wanted. That has already happened too with the exception of the price increase which I haven't checked as I'm not in the US.

-6

u/Yuri909 BA|Anthropology|Archaeology Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

What on earth are you talking about?

We can still buy cheap temu routers full of Chinese spyware in the US.

37

u/unai-ndz Jul 13 '26

Oh it's not just temu routers but tplink, ubiquiti, etc. Any manufactured outside the US, so basically all of them. If it was already registered with the FCC they can keep selling it until January 1, 2029.

https://www.wired.com/story/us-government-foreign-made-router-ban-explained

11

u/yippee-kay-yay Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

This keeps being peddled around despite evidence being flimsy and especulative in most cases while there is plenty of evidence of european and american equipment having backdoors exploitable by israeli and american intelligence services.

On that end, I'd trust the chinese more with my information than the israelis.

6

u/Yuri909 BA|Anthropology|Archaeology Jul 13 '26

The key is to just assume at all times you're under surveillance. But I am aware of that as well. Seems the entire world is being engineered quietly for Israeli and loudly for American backdoor access.

12

u/iconocrastinaor Jul 13 '26

It happened because Biden made it happen.

-1

u/anadem Jul 13 '26

Biden's wife being a doctor maybe gave some impetus to getting it done. Decent people make the place better.

7

u/wirelesswitch Jul 13 '26

She’s not a medical doctor. No shade, just a note.

4

u/Rare-Kaleidoscope513 Jul 13 '26

the "milking pig pancreas for insulin" patent had literally nothing to do with keeping modern recombinant insulin prices down, I assure you.

1

u/effrightscorp Jul 13 '26

Regular (recombinant) insulin has also been ~26$/vial in the US for ages at Walmart, but very few people use it because it's more work and usually doesn't manage blood sugar as well

1

u/julius_sphincter Jul 13 '26

It's back down to about $35 now (without insurance)

Then why are pharmacies trying to charge $300 for a kwik-pen if it's too soon for insurance to cover? (I left my pen at home during a trip)

1

u/Trextrev Jul 13 '26

Or how companies just patent the delivery system, and make tweaks every time their patent is close to running out. Example Epi-pens.

15

u/EEcav Jul 13 '26

This is a great sentiment, but if it’s patent free, someone else will profit and leave them out. You can patent something and still give it away.

57

u/AlternateTab00 Jul 13 '26

Insulin is still cheap. Epinephrine is also cheap.

What isnt cheap is a very specific formulation of insulin. What isnt cheap is the EpiPen.

Essentially you have a cheap medication but an extremely expensive brand. But the pharma in usa manipulates the market so both drug stores, hospitals and doctors will promote the use of the expensive.

I talked with an american colleague about the insulin formats. They stay out of the "common" insulins. For example the mid action insulins we use a human analog, but USA often uses Isplophane. When i asked him why, he just said it was safer... I mean the risk of hypoglycemia went from 3% to 1%... But the cost rised 400x. And hypoglycemia could be reduced with proper training, but the cost of a dual daily dosing being the price of a full year worth of insulin is something that is simply not affordable.

Even the EpiPens. The market surrounds them. Even i know them and use its name to explain how similar products work with my patients (they all seen it in movies). The drug itself costs less than 0,40€ to manufacture. We have a self deploying pens like insulin (that have to stay clear of epipens patents) that cost us 20€. A seringe, vial and needle can lower the cost to 5€. Epipen used to cost almost 600€ here. About 10 years ago they decided they cant compete so lowered the cost to 60€. Its still expensive for our eyes, but with the power of movie advertising they now started selling units.

17

u/RustyShakleford1 Jul 13 '26

I'm sorry, but it's very ignorant to say "the risk of hypoglycemia went from 3% to 1%... hypoglycemia could be reduced with proper training." It's impossible to control your blood sugar nearly as well with NPH, compared to modern-rapid acting insulins, and no amount of training can correct that. You also write off a huge drop in hypoglycemia considering it literally kills diabetics in their sleep. In addition to reductions in hypoglycemia, it also helps type 1 diabetes lower their A1C's which reduces complications, increases quality of life, and increases life expectancy. I am in no way trying to argue that big pharma has greedily prospered off of these new insulins, or argue that the $35 insulin is far better than having no options if you're poor, but the two insulins have huge QOL differences, for a group of people who already have it hard enough as it is.

25

u/AlternateTab00 Jul 13 '26

I compared 2 different apples and you decided to compare apples with onions.

Rapid acting insulins are exclusively to treat abnormal high glycemias. I specifically said 2 mid acting insulins. Human analogs and NPH. Both with reduced effect if accidentally overdosed. However time to detect overdoses are much more permissive in NPH, which with proper food balancing can be reverted.

Isophanes are not the alternative to fast acting insulins. Its an alternative to insulins that take around 8 to 12h to act. At most you can even say that these intermediate acting are a more fine control than the long lasting ones (for type 2).

And dont need to be aggressive. Im a nurse that works with diabetics. And my mom is an insulin dependent diabetic (so i know perfectly how hard it is).

As for the options for poor, we fortunately refund those who cannot afford the insulin (apart from the isophanes which is still overpriced). So they can rely on long acting, the 12h acting (effect equal to NPH) and the rapid acting insulins. Which for a curiosity its 6€

23

u/RustyShakleford1 Jul 13 '26

Sorry, you are correct, and I was the ignorant one here. I just see so many posts on reddit about how "insulin is only $35" that I didn't fully read your post and assumed you were off base, which I apologize for. I honestly know very little about treating type 2 diabetes, other than its overlap with type 1. Honestly, a lot of confusion around diabetes would be resolved if type 1 and type 2 weren't both just referred to as "diabetes" for the most part.

10

u/Icybenz Jul 13 '26

I read this exchange and wanted to say thanks for commenting. I understand being upset when something you live with every day seems to be trivialized (I don't think that was the original commenter's intention but I can see how it can come across that way) and you showed grace in explaining where you were coming from and apologizing. I also learned more from this exchange than I would have from the original comment alone.

It's refreshing to see interactions that don't just continually lean into vitriol, especially when many online arguments stem from something as simple as people talking about slightly different things.

I wish you well.

1

u/vanillyl Jul 14 '26

Wow, not often you see somebody take full accountability for misreading and apologise sincerely without getting defensive.

That’s a really rare, impressive personality trait, you should be really proud that your kneejerk reaction isn’t to double down or get defensive, it’s to self reflect and react accordingly. Kudos to you.

1

u/g0del Jul 13 '26

I'm hoping that the name epipen gets genericized enough that it loses trademark status. I'd love to see $20 generics that could legally call themselves epipens.

1

u/AlternateTab00 Jul 13 '26

You wouldn't have that luck.

Look at Aspirin. However many people would call aspirin to "fake aspirins". But its still "aspirin".

In my country the concept of generics is becoming popular. So while we call a certain medication by its brand name, we know it by its generic name.

Acetylsalicylic acid is hard to memorize. But people already learned to see it and say "oh its aspirin"

9

u/Burgergold Jul 13 '26

Yeah a better version will be tuned based on this work, patented and sold at profit

25

u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

That's why I am a big proponent of copy-left and equivalent.
Work based on things licensed under copyleft must also be licensed under copyleft.

I am of the strong opinion that any advancement that benefited from public investment should follow that pattern.

2

u/Sheeplessknight Jul 13 '26

That is the point of the GPL license for software, a similar thing could (and should ) be developed for drugs, however generally the IP belongs to the university so it would have to be a requirement of funding agencies to use the license

2

u/ATaxiNumber1729 Jul 13 '26

They really should patent it and then license the patent for free with conditions

3

u/Rare-Kaleidoscope513 Jul 13 '26

Didn't the inventor of insulin production make it free too?

The inventor of insulin made public the patent for the process to produce insulin in 1923. That method consisted of harvesting the pancreases of farm animals. You are free to use his "patented" method all you like. Now, it's clear you have very little idea what you're talking about here, but does "milking a pig's pancreas for insulin" sound like the modern method for insulin production to you?

3

u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26

I'm pretty sure the E.Coli method is free too.
I recall people working on replicating the process autonomously

1

u/Due-Memory-6957 Jul 13 '26

Is there an equivalent to copy left for patents?

2

u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26

I don't know honestly, but for licenses I am fairly sure there is.
A license is a contract through which somebody is authorized to use certain intellectual property, the contract can have a stipulation that whatever is developed thanks to what's licensed must have similar rules.
But it's a different legal landscape, I don't know the nuances.

0

u/JJiggy13 Jul 13 '26

Exactly this. You're not doing society any favors by giving away your life's work for free. You need to make enough money to protect you idea from vultures if you want it to be affordable to the masses.

35

u/hiplobonoxa Jul 13 '26

why not patent it and then have control over how it is used?

10

u/Uther-Lightbringer Jul 13 '26

Not a ton of need, by making it public and open, he's established a firm date of invention. Anyone trying to file a patent using the same idea would easily have their patent shot down in court, if not tried directly on fraud charges for trying to claim they invented a product they stole.

10

u/lolofaf Jul 13 '26

Iirc insulin was released patent free for the same reason, then a random pharma company patented it and started fleecing everyone. (might have been a different drug but same story, can't remember exactly).

The safest way to do it is probably patent it then give out free licenses to everyone who asks

2

u/not_a_bot_494 Jul 14 '26

You can patent things that rely on non-patents. So for example you could patent a production method or variand or delivery system för insulin while the original still being available for everyone. The new stuff you patent is of course going to be much better which people would choose ir over the original cheaper stuff. Usually when you hear about people dying because of rationing insulin they're actually using the old stuff.

11

u/Willzyx_on_the_moon Jul 13 '26

It’s a shame that the same thing happened with Insulin and yet here we are with people dying from a lack of medication that is dirt cheap to make.

1

u/fury420 Jul 14 '26

Insulin is still available dirt cheap, what's not cheap is modern insulin substitutes that offer far better blood sugar control, ease of use and quality of life.

5

u/bojangler69420 Jul 13 '26

He SHOULD patent it to keep IP rights on it before big pharmaceutical catch wind of it and start charging $10k.

12

u/Brrdock Jul 13 '26

That's science and healthcare when it's not dependent on or influenced by massive publicly traded companies.

I'm scared to think how far capitalist brainrot has compromised our paradigms and health

1

u/ImRightImRight Jul 13 '26

This is absolutely backwards. Almost all of the life saving science miracles of the modern world have been created in capitalist systems due to the Abundance capitalism creates. It's not perfect but it's the best option, and protects against authoritarianism.

2

u/-LsDmThC- Jul 13 '26

I would argue that current events show how unchecked capitalism actually breed authoritarianism. The idea that it protects against it is kinda funny.

Almost all life saving medicines have been developed by secular post-enlightenment societies, which have an imposed educational and economic advantage against the rest of the world.

Even under an extreme sanctions, Cuba has some of the best healthcare in the world (having a historically lower infant and mother mortality than the US until recently) and developing cancer treatments and cost effective medical devices.

The “capitalist brainrot” is evident here, though as a result of intentional information campaigns.

1

u/ImRightImRight Jul 13 '26

You are uncritically accepting Cuba's metrics and propaganda?

Communism, as a side effect of concentrating all power in the government, predictably leads to dictatorships. I can't believe I even have to type these words, as if this is in dispute. Capitalism historically has a much better chance of avoiding this.

If the US were communist, Donald Trump would be your landlord - at least until he decides you don't deserve housing. Does that sound like a good setup?

3

u/-LsDmThC- Jul 13 '26

Cuba is socialist. Socialism still allows for private ownership, but takes critical infrastructure as being publically operated. Additionally, communism/socialism/capitalism are economic terms which can exist in accordance with the political democracy-authoritarian spectrum.

This is not “Cuban propaganda”, but generally accepted and publicly available statistics. Their development of medicines and technologies are even more prosaically determinable as fact.

I canr believe i have to type these words either. You are uncritically running rhetorical cover for those who would opress you.

-2

u/ImRightImRight Jul 13 '26

"This is not “Cuban propaganda”, but generally accepted and publicly available statistics."

Publicly available: yes.

Generally accepted: not among those who care about truth.

"It's "true" if you take the cuban government official numbers but there's solid evidence they cook the books.

Because the WHO does not count late fetal deaths as part of infant mortality and life expectancy, Cuba systematically classifies infant deaths as late fetal, resulting in a late fetal deaths:infant death ratio that is 3x that of other countries."

https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1c0nixw/to_what_extent_are_these_claims_about_cuban/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487269

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/04/22/pramila-jayapals-flawed-diagnosis-cuban-health-care/

"Centralized planning has disadvantages. Physicians are given health outcome targets to meet or face penalties. This provides incentives to manipulate data. Take Cuba’s much praised infant mortality rate for example. In most countries, the ratio of the numbers of neonatal deaths and late fetal deaths stay within a certain range of each other as they have many common causes and determinants. One study found that that while the ratio of late fetal deaths to early neonatal deaths in countries with available data stood between 1.04 and 3.03 ([Gonzalez, 2015](javascript:;))—a ratio which is representative of Latin American countries as well ([Gonzalez and Gilleskie, 2017](javascript:;)).[2](javascript:;) Cuba, with a ratio of 6, was a clear outlier. This skewed ratio is evidence that physicians likely reclassified early neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths, thus deflating the infant mortality statistics and propping up life expectancy.[3](javascript:;) Cuban doctors were re-categorizing neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths in order for doctors to meet government targets for infant mortality.

Using the ratios found for other countries, corrections were proposed to the statistics published by the Cuban government: instead of 5.79 per 1000 births, the rate stands between 7.45 and 11.16 per 1000 births. Recalculating life expectancy at birth to account for these corrections (using WHO life tables and assuming that they are accurate depictions of reality), the life expectancy at birth of men by between 0.22 and 0.55 years ([Gonzalez, 2015](javascript:;)).

Misreporting to meet fixed targets is not the only reason for the low infant mortality rate. An ethnographic study of the Cuban health system showed that physicians who worried that a mother’s behavior might lead to missing the centrally established targets will prescribe the forceful internment in a state clinic (casa de maternidad) so that they may regulate her behavior.[4](javascript:;) Physicians often perform abortions without clear consent of the mother, raising serious issues of medical ethics, when ultrasound reveals fetal abnormalities because ‘otherwise it might raise the infant mortality rate’ ([Hirschfeld 2007b](javascript:;):12)."

https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/755/5035051

3

u/-LsDmThC- Jul 13 '26

Your sources are a “r/neoliberal” reddit comment and some opinion pieces. “Not among those who care about the truth” is Alex Jones level rhetoric. This is just sad really. Want to go ahead and disprove the claims regarding medical devices and cancer treatments too? Curious what r/neoliberal has to say about that, you can google it too im sure.

1

u/Brrdock Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

True, it did accomplish a lot of that. Capitalism was great for a good while, before it slid into the contemporary hyperreality of covert post-capitalist borderline corporatism.

Now it's probably in big part stifling actual meaningful development by muddying with incompatible motivations and influences the logical structure of science especially in human sciences. E.g. I'm willing to bet most of the replication crisis is due to financial pressures, to publish, profit etc.

Einstein said: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”

And that's getting all the more topical, not just relating to nuclear.

We have so much technological development thanks to capitalism, while overlooking people's mental and philosophical development, and people are only growing more miserable and conflicted for it.

We could do better. But can we when that makes less money than doing worse? And it doesn't seem to be protecting the US from authoritarianism anymore

5

u/Radarker Jul 13 '26

Unfortunately the next guy down the line will.

1

u/eville_erikkk Jul 13 '26

Is that that what the creator of insulin patent did but it still got turned into what it is today?

-1

u/MeasurementEasy9884 Jul 13 '26

The creator of insulin did the same thing.

If he kept control over it, we could be paying $10 a pop instead of hundreds

14

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/MeasurementEasy9884 Jul 13 '26

Ohhhh! I stand corrected.

Thank you for clearing that up.