The problem is that the production cost for a dose of medication (at least as long as it's a chemical synthetization process) is extremely low... but the cost of bringing it to market extremely high. Only a rare fraction of candidates makes it through the first stages of research and validation, and of what remains a large part gets rejected in human trials. All of these trials are expensive, especially the human ones.
And that one successful medication has to pay for all the trials of all the other candidates that didn't make it... and all the low hanging fruits have long been picked. What is remaining now is stuff for rare viral diseases (not just Covid vaccines that work effectively against mutations, but also HIV, Ebola and similars), cancers and multi-resistant bacteria. All of this has been going on for decades and news of actual marketable products are much rarer than news about promising cancer or whatever treatment ideas.
Everyone loves to dunk on pharma (with reasons, see e.g. Skhreli or the bullshit regarding insulin patents), but the core problem is the sheer cost associated with developing pharmaceuticals.
I'm sorry, but i've heard first-hand of instances where drug research is terminated because it looked to yield a cure ... then funding funnled to those that produce a treatment, rather than a cure.
Cures are not profitable, treatments that don't cure are.
So yes, everyone loves to dunk on pharma and should.
And that one successful medication has to pay for all the trials of all the other candidates that didn't make it... and all the low hanging fruits have long been picked. What is remaining now is stuff for rare viral diseases (not just Covid vaccines that work effectively against mutations, but also HIV, Ebola and similars), cancers and multi-resistant bacteria. All of this has been going on for decades and news of actual marketable products are much rarer than news about promising cancer or whatever treatment ideas.
Everyone loves to dunk on pharma (with reasons, see e.g. Skhreli or the bullshit regarding insulin patents), but the core problem is the sheer cost associated with developing pharmaceuticals.