Most people don't seem to realize the kind of progress that's been made in recent years with CRISPR etc. These problems are becoming data problems rather than biology/chemistry problems. The public (government) should certainly be funding many teams with small amounts of money ($10,000 to $100,000 say) rather than pouring billions/trillions of dollars into "proven winners" (big pharma) that mainly come up with therapies rather than doing basic research.
Honestly I think the same argument applies to so many areas of the economy: alternative energy, space travel, growing food, and so on. We could be finding so many "cures" for relatively modest investments that our current system has actually become very expensive due to the opportunity cost of not doing so. I've spent most of my life asking what we are all working for and towards but have come to the conclusion that keeping everyone busy is the goal now, not progress.
This could discourage smaller companies from picking it up (ex. to build upon it, from which in the long run everyone will profit, see open-source) and make CRISPR-based treatments more expensive / unavailable (ex. large companies owning the patents artificially inflating the price, may be even more than the old technology it replaces).
Most people don't seem to realize the kind of progress that's been made in recent years with CRISPR etc. These problems are becoming data problems rather than biology/chemistry problems. The public (government) should certainly be funding many teams with small amounts of money ($10,000 to $100,000 say) rather than pouring billions/trillions of dollars into "proven winners" (big pharma) that mainly come up with therapies rather than doing basic research.
Honestly I think the same argument applies to so many areas of the economy: alternative energy, space travel, growing food, and so on. We could be finding so many "cures" for relatively modest investments that our current system has actually become very expensive due to the opportunity cost of not doing so. I've spent most of my life asking what we are all working for and towards but have come to the conclusion that keeping everyone busy is the goal now, not progress.