I'd like to address an issue that has been bothering me a lot lately.
In a nutshell, the American pharmaceutical industry of today has little interest in developing cheap and effective treatments, even if they address common or potentially disastrous problems. The latest poster child of this phenomenon is the flu. Specifically, America's inability to produce flu vaccine, there being only one manufacturer in this country. With the specter of bird flu lurking in the wings, it has become a matter of national security. Yet when anyone points this out, I hear a lot of muttering about no profit being in it, so what can you do. Nor are vaccines the only type of treatment that is being neglected.
I don't know about you, but when the free market fails in life-or-death matters, I start looking for other solutions.
The only constructive suggestion these days regarding flu vaccine supply is to grant manufacturers limited liability for side effects once they gain FDA approval, thus sparing them the danger of crippling lawsuits. This is particularly important with regard to vaccines, which often provoke a reaction in a few rare individuals, despite protecting millions of others. But neglect of important solutions is not solely due to liability issues.
The other bedrock of modern medicine, antibiotics (used to treat bacterial infections), is also neglected, due to low profits. Complex parasites like Malaria which primarily affect the third world don't get nearly the attention they deserve. Non-deadly but common applications are also neglected. Contraceptives, for instance, have improved virtually not at all since the invention of the pill despite several worrisome side effects and imperfect efficiency. Trials of promising but profitless male-contraceptive solutions like RISUG are unlikely to see the light of day in this country. The list goes on.
One can't help but wonder if Big Pharm is intentionally neglecting effective treatments in favor of more profitable revenue streams. For instance, over-the-counter drugs which treat the symptoms of the colds and flu, or the massive profits that come with children versus contraceptives.
There is a simple solution to this: a non-profit government or international corporation empowered to make and distribute orphaned and neglected solutions for the public interest, and funded to do their jobs. Fortunately, most of the preliminary research is already done with government grants, via the NIH and others. This still leaves expensive clinical trials, refinement for manufacture, and mass production. Private corporations would still be free to conduct their operations as they saw fit and market their patented medications, but would face competition from an agency driven by results rather than profit.
How feasible is this? What laws would prevent such a solution? Are there agencies out there already that could be expanded to fill this role? Would the public support this, even over the presumably massive opposition from Big Pharm? Indeed could such an agency even fulfill its mission despite constant interference via lobbying and litigation?