> They make every attempt to reduce costs and increase development speed, and it's possible that in the long run, things are better.
My point is that research companies should focus on discovering how the human body works and reacts to different substances, not how to create the drug efficiently. Their output should be scientific knowledge (and we would pay them for that), not industrial processes. That can be left to manufacturing companies, operating in a mostly-free market (but with quality regulations) and all that.
> Also, if research is publicly funded, it would probably tend to focus on whatever the public is more aware of. Public awareness of diseases doesn't do correlate well to the severity of the problem.
True. But profitability isn't really the same as the severity or "ethical" importance either, and that's how things are today. Directly funding research is how things are done with particle physics for example.
My point is that research companies should focus on discovering how the human body works and reacts to different substances, not how to create the drug efficiently. Their output should be scientific knowledge (and we would pay them for that), not industrial processes. That can be left to manufacturing companies, operating in a mostly-free market (but with quality regulations) and all that.
> Also, if research is publicly funded, it would probably tend to focus on whatever the public is more aware of. Public awareness of diseases doesn't do correlate well to the severity of the problem.
True. But profitability isn't really the same as the severity or "ethical" importance either, and that's how things are today. Directly funding research is how things are done with particle physics for example.