>search for a cure for a non-meme related illness that isn't

Because ethics do not matter

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>>8888170
Simple business. If there are only 100 people in the world with a certain disease it would be unprofitable to make truly effective medicine, let alone a cure for it. Not saying that it's a big conspiracy to keep people ill but it just so happens to work out that way.

>>8888179
Right. So if it was your mother who had a rare illness you would just tell her
>"sorry ma, but the free market doesn't deem you profitable enough to produce a cure for you :^)

Sadly, I had a daughter in this situation. I've recovered from it now, but I can't escape the feeling that if more people had her disease she would have recovered.

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>>8888206
My mother actually has a rare illness and for a few years now she's completely unresponsive so telling her that would do nothing. Autism aside, it's just the way it is. Do you have a plan? A plan to change the entire pharmaceutical industry? Would you actually DO anything? No, of course not. Free market capitalism is a part of our lives just as much as rare illnesses or your shitty posts are.

>>8888170
Biology is hard.

how much is a single life worth? 100k? 1 million? most people would say yes. 100 million? well everyone will die eventually anyways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

let's say you have a limited budget and have to choose between investing on the cure for a rare disease or investing on medicine that eases hypertension which affects hundreds of millions of people. What do you choose to do?

Resources are finite and no economic system can escape that fact.

>>8888179
>>8888392
>>8888419
Pharmaceutical companies spend the majority of their money on marketing, not R&D. Your argument is invalid.

>>8888429
>opportunity cost isn't real because marketing
ok.

>>8888472
Opportunity cost doesn't apply because only ~30% of their resources are being utilized to manufacture and research drugs, i.e. they don't have to sacrifice anything but advertising.

This kind of apologism is why such an exploitative system is allowed to persist.

>the free market may be able to fix it, but it won't
What did they mean by this?

Which is why funding and properly organizing the NIH is so critical.

>>8888550
you have no source on that, and my case was about opportunity cost in general, a problem that is unavoidable. You refused to answer the question. Let's say you're the dictator of a socialist economy. Are you gonna spend hundreds of millions on research of a rare disease that affects ten people, or are you going to fund research on hypertension instead? Resources are finite whether you like it or not, saving lives costs money and saving some lives costs more money than saving others. When you make the choice of saving a dozen of people with rare diseases you're sacrificing hundreds of others inflicted with common deadly medical conditions.

>>8888217
How is she now?

>>8888797
Your argument is invalid because most spending really does go to advertising. Try again.

>http://www.fiercepharma.com/sales-and-marketing/new-numbers-back-old-meme-pharma-does-spend-more-on-marketing-than-r-d

>The biggest marketing premium belonged to Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ), with $17.5 billion in marketing spending, more than double its $8.2 billion in R&D costs. J&J has a big consumer division, with store-shelf products like baby shampoo and dental floss, which could skew the numbers toward marketing.

>Next in line is Pfizer ($PFE), long known for its marketing muscle. The drugmaker plowed $11.4 billion into marketing in 2013, $4.8 billion more than it spent on R&D--a difference of 72%. AstraZeneca ($AZN) is close behind with a 70% difference. The U.K.-based company put $7.3 billion toward marketing last year, and $4.3 billion into R&D. AstraZeneca has been pumping up marketing behind products such as its blood-thinner Brilinta as it preps for the onslaught of Nexium copycats.

>The next 5 range from a 47% difference in favor of R&D on the high end--Novartis ($NVS), with $14.6 billion in marketing spending--to 27% on the low end. The latter is Merck ($MRK), with $9.5 billion allocated to marketing and $7.5 billion to R&D.

>>8888811
your article unironically has "meme" on the title.

>>8888819
Do you disagree with the numbers? I chose an industry-friendly source because the misallocation of capital is so heinous that even they recognize it.

Accept it: you are wrong.

>>8888170
What are you talking about? Why is it allowed that not every disease in existence is cured?

Check out these septs though

>>8888823
point to me exactly what I'm wrong about. In your utopia opportunity costs will not exist? Every disease will be addressed equally with infinite resources at your disposal?
besides medicine needs publicity, or your wishful socialist dictatorship won't spend a dime on propaganda?

>>8888838
You are presenting a false choice between either treating rare diseases OR producing boner pills, when in reality it's possible to produce treatments for rare diseases AND boner pills by wasting less money on advertising the boner pills.

>>8888824
Because life has value, and if that value can't meet the running cost of the industry that would save it, the industry won't exist.

Ensuring that everyone has access to healthcare is great, but it gets a bit harder to justify funding the necessary R&D, the legal gymnastics, and setting up the production lines for a new drug just for a handful of people.