Why hasn't there been a breakthrough in any kind of medicine

because ever since we've been able to isolate disaster-class bio's such as polio, the implications have become too dire. this may seem blunt, but when you think about it, can be applied to every scenario

we would need the ability for a computer to very quickly isolate and contradict any threat to the collective before we allow the power of bio to surpass our ability to understand it

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>>7925604
Pharmaceutual companies spend LITERALLY, L I T E R A L L Y 80%(EIGHTY PERCENT) of their money on advertising.

It's fucking disgusting.

>>7925686
Advertising pays for itself.

>>7925604
yeah it's kind of pissed me off too. I thought I was the only one ho noticed this.

It seems like every week we hear on the news or shitty websites like IFLS touting scientists curing aids or destroying cancer with lasers or gold nano particles or some other magic, and then it is never heard from again.

My dad, who is a radiation oncologist, gets so autistic whenever he's watching the news and they talk about finding a new cure for cancer. He's says it's never going to happen.

>>7925604
Pharm student here. Majority of the problems that remain are more difficult to solve than things such as polio. Also, we just fucking cured hepatitis C you uneducated swine

>>7925686
Cough...bullshit...cough. No Company spend 80% of their revenue on advertising. That would be insane.

I looked up one Company, Phizer. for FYE 2013:

Sale: 18.6% of revenue (includes direct sales cost, i.e. sales reps in the field)
SG&A: 27.8% (includes advertising, general admin and executive salary costs)
R&D: 12.5% (new drug research and testing)
Total non-production costs all sources: 58.9%

Only a portion of the SG&A figure of 27.8% is actual advertising.

I am confident other companies would be comparable.

>>7925604
>Were still using chemo

"Chemo" is a term that refers to literally hundreds of drugs. We've come up with plenty of new chemo drugs that treat cancer better (more killing cancer cells, less killing regular cells). Why do you think survival rates for cancers are going up across the board?

>were still using antibiotics

Why would you use anything else? Antibiotics are hugely effective at fixing bacterial infections. Of course, there's currently a demand for new antibiotics in lieu of resistant bacteria, but it wasn't as big of a deal several decades ago.

>Is it because the FDA became too autistic and strict with their double blind trials and strict requirements for drug creation?

Ah, so you're complaining safety and efficacy trials? Shame on the FDA for making sure that shit works and won't kill you. Never go full retard, man.

>Literally when was the last time there was a real breakthrough in medicine? A REAL one. Not "curing AIDS" for the 10,000th time.

Breakthroughs occur through treatments that vastly improve quality and longevity of life. Medicine has pretty much picked all of the low-hanging fruit. Most of the diseases that are being researched today will never have a singular 'cure', just better and better treatments that asymptotically approach perfection. For instance, cancer is impossible to cure because cancer cells float around your bloodstream stay in your tissues even after you go into remission. Given enough time, the cancer will always come back, no matter what.

There's still plenty of modern breakthroughs that have vastly improved the outcomes for certain diseases. Two that come to mind are deep brain stimulation for people with Parkinson's (basically resolves tremors and neurological symptoms for anybody who's a suitable candidate) and Losartan for people with Marfan's Syndrome (essentially halts aortic root dilation, which usually kills people with Marfans).

>>7925604
Because good health can't hold out against entropy forever.

>>7925795
This
All of this


Op is a retard

>>7925795
/thread

>>7925795
This is bullshit, there are plenty patients where the cancer never ever comes back. Lance Armstrong had stage three cancer in 1996, he is still fine today.

>>7925850
>This is bullshit, there are plenty patients where the cancer never ever comes back. Lance Armstrong had stage three cancer in 1996, he is still fine today.

Yes, because it hasn't returned yet. It's entirely possible he will die from natural causes before it ever comes back. But if he was immune to all forms of injury and disease other than cancer, he would eventually get another tumor.

I probably should have phrased it better, so let me try again: Cancer is impossible to cure because 'curing' a disease implies a permanent end. Cancer cells persist in your body after remission, and if you lived for long enough, they would form another tumor no matter what.

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>>7925775
>R&D: 12.5%

wtf it should at least be 25%

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>>7925704
>Advertising pays for itself.
Lol, no.
At best it can convince you to spend money on brand "x" instead of brand "y", but in the big picture, it's a wash.

>>7925883
>At best
no, it can definitely convince people to spend money that they would not have otherwise spent

and besides that, of course, if you ARE brand x, then people spending money on your brand over another's is not a wash.

>>7925883
So, you believe companies spent massive amounts of capital on advertising as some form of corporate welfare for advertising companies? You're an idiot.

>>7925899
>implying he doesnt know more than multibillion dollar organizations

fuck off moron

>>7925894
>no, it can definitely convince people to spend money that they would not have otherwise spent
Meh, little difference.
Nobody buries money in mayonnaise jars in their back yard.
Money in the bank is loaned back out as investment capital.

>>7925894
>if you ARE brand x, then people spending money on your brand over another's is not a wash.
But in the BIG picture, advertisement is an almost complete waste.
Any gains brand "x" makes are a loss for brand "y".
Even if advertising convinces you to buy more garlic bread (for instance) that's less money you have to spend on new storm doors.
Advertising is an unfortunate side-effect of how our system works.
See also: broken window fallacy.

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>>7925899
>So, you believe companies spent massive amounts of capital on advertising as some form of corporate welfare for advertising companies?
That's not even close to what I said.

>>7925909
So you think that carefully-honed profit machines are pouring massive portions of their money into something that won't make them any money? That doesn't even make sense from an economic perspective.

>But in the BIG picture, advertisement is an almost complete waste.Any gains brand "x" makes are a loss for brand "y".

The #1 most common economic fallacy is the idea that whenever someone wins out on something, another person has to lose.

With your example, that person might have never bought garlic bread to begin with. In which case, brand x might win out, but brand y is no worse off. And eventually, when that person starts serving garlic bread at Christmas dinner, his relatives might like it enough and start buying some from brand y, in which case both brands won out in the end.

>>7925911
You very clearly implied that there is no return on investment for advertising dollars. Please explain what I misunderstood.

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>>7925915
>So you think that carefully-honed profit machines are pouring massive portions of their money into something that won't make them any money?
I wish I had a second "Strawman" pic.

NO, THAT"S NOT WHAT I'M SAYING AT ALL.

What I AM saying is exactly what I posted. Try reading my posts again:

>>7925909
>Any gains brand "x" makes are a loss for brand "y".
>Even if advertising convinces you to buy more garlic bread (for instance) that's less money you have to spend on new storm doors.

Advertising allows individual companies to "buy" market share, but does little (if anything) besides drive existing sales to those companies that sacrifice the most to the gods of Madison avenue.

>>7925856
>Source: none
and by your logic virtually all diseases are incurable.

>>7925923
>What I AM saying is exactly what I posted. Try reading my posts again:

I did read your post. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that I'm misinterpreting it. Can you rephrase?

>Advertising allows individual companies to "buy" market share, but does little (if anything) besides drive existing sales to those companies that sacrifice the most to the gods of Madison avenue.

Advertising also gives businesses a better platform to compete, which results in lower prices for the consumer. Sure, big businesses can afford more advertisement, but it's not the same thing as 'buying' customers. The product they're advertising still has to be better than the next guy's and at a reasonable price.

If we banned all advertisement (and I recognize that you're not arguing for that), society would definitely be worse off.

>>7925924
>and by your logic virtually all diseases are incurable.
It's hard to argue with "he's either going to die of cancer or something else".

>>7925924
cancer is a concept, no less than death is. if a virus is causing something, that virus can be contradicted. from what we know cancer is caused by chaos, which causes cell death

>>7925924
>and by your logic virtually all diseases are incurable.

No, plenty of diseases have permanent ends. Your immune system can permanently decimate the population of rhinoviruses in your body, preventing that same organism from ever getting you sick again. (Before you bring it up, yes, many viruses leave permanent 'tracks' in your DNA, but endogenous viral DNA is not a disease).

Cancer is different because tumors are made out of an absolutely absurd amount of cells that neither your immune system nor chemotherapy can ever remove entirely. When you go into remission, you're still going to have to deal with the chronic danger of your remaining cancer cells eventually forming a new tumor.

>>7925927
>Advertising also gives businesses a better platform to compete
WITH EACH OTHER
In TOTAL, advertising mostly helps companies take market share form each other, even to the extent of one industry taking revenue from another company, but it DOESN'T create anything new.
It's like daylight savings.
You can take an hour from the morning and tack it onto the evening, but that doesn't make any NEW hours of daylight.

>>7925930
If you're not old as fuck it's usually genetic and hence can be rectified by fixing the dodgy gene

>>7925930
>cancer is caused by chaos, which causes cell death

reason #283 why physicists are banned from oncology conferences: reducing extremely complicated biological processes to 'entropy lol'.

>>7925937
>but it DOESN'T create anything new.

Sure it does. Garlic bread businesses end up making more money, eventually researching and developing better factories for making higher quality and cheaper garlic bread. Competition amongst advertisers means that the consumer gets to buy more garlic bread with his weekly paycheck. It doesn't create money out of nowhere, but it moves it such that society wins out in the end.

Even though money is a finite resource and investment is somewhat of a zero-sum game, the process of actually exchanging and moving money to other businesses is productive in itself.

>>7925939
its not strictly wrong. we know cancer is not correlated to any specific biological process or interaction. cancer and biological death are very related. insulated traumas

modern medicine is all about correlation

>>7925948
>we know cancer is not correlated to any specific biological process or interaction

If you count ionizing radiation as a biological interaction, then we've absolutely correlated it. Also, I'm pretty sure cancer is correlated to oxidative stress, which is definitely a biological interaction.

>>7925936
That's why we have the 5 year rule. If cancer does recur it's most likely to recur within 5 years. After this it can still happen but is unlikely. Also all cancers are different some recur less than others. Anyway I don't know why you are preaching doom because this doesn't mean cancer can't be beaten. Eventually treatments will get so good that even the most recurring cancers will be reduced to a chronic manageable illness.

>>7925954
well yes, the fact that cancer propagates tells us for sure that there are biological processes involved. but the activation to such significant propagation i dont see attributed to anything but repetitive physical trauma. and yes, technically all biological processes are physical at some level

its my own belief that people have cancer in small amounts all the time, but it takes anomalous stress for it to propagate into consistent and significant cell death. at which point you are quite literally dying and shutting down, and as it stands, we have no cure for death yet

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>>7925861
Nah, you think we want to cure shit? Pfft..

>>7925960
>Eventually treatments will get so good that even the most recurring cancers will be reduced to a chronic manageable illness.

Yeah, that's my point. There's never gonna be the 'cure' that OP wants, but treatments will asymptotically approach perfection.

I wouldn't say that I'm 'preaching doom' either. I totally believe that with the concerted efforts of scientists working on all different types of cancer, we can develop treatments that will make cancer completely manageable. But it's totally unrealistic to hope for some kind of miracle pill that permanently cures the disease.

>>7925966
>its my own belief that people have cancer in small amounts all the time

That's established fact. Your cells routinely develop mutations that screw up cell death. Usually your immune system snuffs it out, but not always.

>>7925775
>Pfizer
>One of the largest pharma companies and R&D companies in the world
>12.5% R&D

Dude, what the fuck.
Like
What
The
Fuck?

Why did I actually try to think that they were spending like half their expenses on R&D. That's why drugs are expensive: because they cover R&D costs.

>>7925966
>its my own belief that people have cancer in small amounts all the time,
Agreed.

> but it takes anomalous stress for it to propagate into consistent and significant cell death.
Cancer is not cell death. It is the unchecked growth of mutated/deformed cells.

>>7925987
dont certain activities have relevant impact on the chance of growing certain cancer. the cancer cells would be a product of another truth, not a simple anomaly in itself

naturally please forgive my ignorance, my knowledge of the subject is casual

>>7925604
Most medicinal research is paid for and done by for-profit businesses.

Cures are generally not lucrative. Treatments are.
Pretty cut and dry I think.

Of course that's not always the case. Some diseases are more profitable to cure because treatments don't have good outcomes and thus when a cure gets onto the market it becomes a cash cow, at least until rates of occurrence drop.

>diseases are never going to be treatable
We just need to wait until nanobots cure all of them. I'll give it another 15 years or so.

>>7925883
That doesn't mean it doesn't pay for itself.

>>7925986
Maybe they spend so much on marketing to make sure nobody can match that.
They let the smaller companies do the high risk R&D because it's the only way for them to gain recognition. When something good is discovered, they buy the company. They also sell countless pills to grand market and ensure a stable revenue ...

That was my answer before googling anything.
Truth is at 12.5%, they wre spending $9.4 billion in R&D in 2010. Not bad considering the company that spent the most in R&D in 2013 was apparently Volkswagen with $13.5 billion.

One could still ask why are they investing more for cars than for health ...but that's still a significant amount.

>>7925739
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw4VeqwsGr0

>>7926066
Actually, 4 of the Top 10 companies based on R&D spendings in 2013 are from the health/biopharma industry. That's a lot of money.

>>7925986
>That's why drugs are expensive

Nah not really senpai, Pfizer and all the other pharma companies ship literally the same drugs to other countries and sell them for crazy cheap amounts.

>>7925686
having pfizer reps coming to the pharmacy and gives all sorts of free shit was the best

>>7925604
>>>/pol/

>>7925850
Being rich and famous is extremely advantageous for one's health.

>>7925604
Lrn2medicine fgt pls

>>7926422
Implications of Illuminati?

>>7926422
It sure didn't help Steve Jobs who died of the lowest of lowliest cancers

>>7925604
Why hasn't there been a breakthrough in any kind of physics since the 60's?

Were still using quantum mechanics, were still using relativity, and the VAST majority of the maths people use were created in the 80's or earlier

Why can't big unis push the envelope anymore? Is it because the NSF became too autistic and strict with their peer review and strict requirements for paper creation?

Literally when was the last time there was a real breakthrough in physics? A REAL one. Not "confirming Einstein" for the 10,000th time.

>>7926438
Steve Jobs was a dumb hippie that thought he could cure his cancer by eating fruit. He doesn't count.

Look at Magic Johnson.

>>7925795
Not only all of this, but the entire field of interventional radiology has made destruction/removal of clots and the removal of small growths much safer for the patient.

Med student here. To be frank, it's very hard to define what constitutes a major breakthrough in medicine. For instance the advent of Genetics, especially since the 70s, has allowed us to understand and even heal/avoid many rare genetic disorders, and the use of recombinant DNA has allowed us easy access and improvement in many kinds of medications that can help hormonal inefficiencies. But I would say that the best definition for a major breakthrough is a discovery that leads to a major drop in morbidity and/or mortality and a rise in the life expectancy.
According to that definition, there have been many small breakthroughs, but there are definitely only a small number of major breakthroughs throughout history:
1. Vaccines (getting rid of many major pathogens including Black Death)
2. Antibiotics (allowing us to survive many common and previously fatal infections)
3. Public Health and Sanitation (Semmelweis and such)

Nothing else even compares in my opinion.

>>7925604
>Why can't big pharma push the envelope anymore?
Look up "patent cliff".
Briefly, a lot of medicine is going off patents and profit margins are set to plummet. People cheer so far but few realise or care that this has already resulted in massive cuts in R&D that will continue. Sandoz alone fired 2000 researchers. Seriously. And that is the way it is all over the business.

So in the dive to the bottom everyone is aiming for big advertising of existing medicine and "save" money on R&D. With the patent complaints it makes sense since R&D could end up unprotected.

Increased spending on ads is not the cause - it is the result.

>>7925795
>in lieu of
in light of