Quote:
Quote by: ghost_stalker  In the world we live in today we have many medicines that treat illness (no cures, but treatments), and the major parties involved in medical research are large pharmaceutical companies, which sell these treatments to make their money. And use the money to find more treatments (which they can charge more people for, and therefore make more money)
Now heres where the catch comes in, these companies make treatments not cures, they do this because treating you is more profitable than curing you. If got cured then you wouldn't need to buy anymore medicine, then the pharmaceutical companies would get your money. They keep one step ahead making sure that once one medicine becomes ineffective they have one that is equally effective, not better.
If medicine research is left to capitalist corporation, then we will never find a cure for anything because it wouldn't be profitable. Research instead should be done by an organization that will benefit from curing people, without receiving any benefit from developing a treatment. If pharmaceutical companies worked to cure disease instead of treating it we probably would be alot more healthy than we are today. |
The only problem with that is that pharma's do seek cures, because if someone found, for example, the cure for AIDS, that company will make a fortune and probably eat up a lot of the market. So it is in their interest to be the one of finds the cure.
Moreover, the prime reason cures are less common than treatments is because viruses and bacterias evolve, especially viruses. This is why a cure for the common cold is virtually impossible, it practically evolves with each carrier. In fact, what disease or virus do we actually have a fully fledged cure for? As in all round antidote? I can't think of one. Some things we have wiped out, such as small pox, because of mass campaigns of innoculation, not because of a cure.
If you were correct however in your analysis, what organisation would you suggest fits your criteria? I don't know of any organisation that would actually benefit from curing people outright, unless they have ulterior purposes just as self serving as big pharma.