this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Because chronic diseases are difficult to cure? A solid portion, like diabetes, or cancer, are a whole host of different causes in a costume.

Anything that can be easily cured/trivially managed, or outright prevented isn't considered a chronic disease any more. Beri-beri and Scurvy are non-issues today. Diabetes and AIDS aren't the death sentences they used to be.

Medical research being deliberately gatekept because a cure would be unprofitable is conspiratorial thinking, and isn't really reflective of reality.

A single dose cure for a chronic illness would be huge, and a lot of places would throw money at one if it existed, even if the cost was several orders of magnitude higher. No insurance, public health scheme, nor medical clinic would want a patient to take a constant course of medication, when they could have one, and be done. It'd be better for them, and patient quality of life. Even for the medication companies, they get to be in history books, and can get instant income, where a long term scheme might have patients dropping off for one reason or another.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

And if someone cures it first that's it, they win the whole pot until generics are approved.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

lots of chronic diseases we have today are either degenerative or genetic, so it requires new fancy tools like gene therapy to rework lots of cellular biology at very low level. small molecule drugs can manage these to some degree, but these were a thing for like 50, 70 years now so that's why these are a thing

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Thank you. You expressed everything I wanted to say.

Gatekeeping cures to illness just isn't true.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

I guess the sad thing is, that given the way things are, i cant blame people for thinking this way. Because be honest. Would you put it past them to not do it?

I can 100% see healthcare and pharmaceutical companies doing this for profits.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 days ago (7 children)

Tiring ass conspiracy theorists.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If a disease is curable, it isn't chronic, now is it? This is a dumb take.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Yeah, this is a common truism that angry people confuse with actual criticism.

It would, in fact, be extremely profitable to develop a cure for something chronic. If you could make and sell one pill that cures AIDS, for instance, then you would become very rich (not to mention famous).

That's not a defense of capitalism. For-profit healthcare is a dystopian nightmare. When you consider that the AIDS cure would be too expensive for most people to buy, and only poor people would suffer from the disease, you should remember that that's how it is now! Poor people cannot afford cures available to rich people, cures for preventable diseases, cures for treatable and manageable diseases, cures for addiction and obesity. Poor people cannot afford to stop working long enough to seek treatment for basic aliments.

So no, scientists and doctors aren't conspiring to avoid working on cures in favor of treatment for chronic conditions. They're just going where the money is. They absolutely would cure any disease if it were possible, they just wouldn't share it with the world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

For the record PrEP exists and it is pretty effective in preventing getting HIV (the virus that causes AIDS). Yet another reason the OP is dumb. Also, HIV can be prevented from turning into AIDS now, too.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Of the 10k or so identified chronic diseases, about 95% of them are genetic

Given that we, as humanity, have just barely started ( in research time. From 1987 to 2024, that's almost 40 years of research, and development, basically nothing on one of, if not the toughest field in the world, and we are still doing breakthroughs on it)

In fact this research has been the cause of improving the quality of life for people with these diseases as care for the patients during test reveals more data.

Also remember, low understanding of the technology, particularly AI which is extremely helpful in these types of researches and past eugenics fears have marred the general zeitgeist for years, which may also cause early adoption to be difficult.

I mean come on, people are still scared about genetically modified food.

And also, another one thing to remember is that a lot, like 80% of these diseases, have an inherent risk for the life of the patient, which slows the research as this limits the amount of data you can get.

So, we are not yet at the point of cracking the genetic makeup of a disease, chugging it into a bioreactor, and whipping billions of potential enhanced cures adapted for the specific body chemical makeup, but we are getting there.

So yeah there is no conspiracy.

Billions of dollars have been spent only on cancer research, imagine for the rest of diseases. If a government had cancer cure done for X type of cancer, they'd deploy that shit like Doritos locos at the mall and ensure themselves indefinite reelections forever.

It's just really, really, RIDICULOUSLY difficult.

But, we are humans, difficult for us, is an old friend

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

I've grown up fascinated with several diseases and was eager to study them and find treatments that would better and prolong the life of the patients. By the time I was done with university my disease pet peeves were already very well managed. Take cystic fibrosis, a disease that was still considered a childhood disease when I was born in the 90s. With trikafta and other treatments CF patients now climb mount everest and whatnot. They have kids, back in school I learned that the few cases who made it to adulthood were infertile because of their viscous mucus. Like, I would love to work on an mRNA based gene therapy for it, but it seems almost unnecessary, given how manageable the disease has become.

I also agree and want to stress what you are saying about the acceptance of gene therapy/ GMOs in general. I am in Germany and people here are insanely against GMOs of any kind. Manipulating the human genome is so far off the rails for the vast majority, I mean there is still so much hate against GMOs in food, we are nowhere near trying to use gene therapy on a broad scale. Let alone that to actually cure a genetic disease, you would have to undergo the gene therapy while you're still a zygote. This is simply illegal here. Our research opportunities are severely limited on genetic manipulation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

This.

Yes, yes, there are conspiracies here and there, but these days we can't have any reason anymore, everything must have an evil genius behind it.

This is just another case of "it's not that easy"

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 days ago

This is such a lie. This only works if you assume no other people will ever develop one of those illnesses. Even if all acquired illnesses are ever eradicated, big pharma companies will still make bank off hygiene products, makeup, and Aspirin. Pharma companies don't just sell treatments and cures. Duh.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That is not how modern capitalism works. Modern capitalism works in 5 years. CEO have figured out that they don't need to work for the shareholders but make it seem like they do. CEO wants to get their bonus and they get their bonus if the shareholders are happy and usually the shareholders have short term interests too. So for a CEO, it is more profitable to take actions that generate more profit in short terms.

Which is why there are mass hiring and firings. Those things are a huge waste of resources but it look good on you if you can sell it right to the shareholders. You are willing and able to react quickly.

So a cure for cancer would be sold as soon as possible because whoever has the patent, would make billions (short term). Remember biotech and their COVID vaccine?

The problem becomes finding a cure and a CEO doesn't have any interest to heavily invest in finding a cure if the cure is not "around" the corner anyway, as that wouldn't be very short term minded of them. But as this problem exists for any illness, the ones most likely to be treatable through publicly funded Research will get the funding to make the medicine and put a patent on it.

Edit: they don't kill you for profit. They don't heal you for profit. For their profit, they act. You just happen to be acted on.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 days ago

Making cure when everyone else makes a treatment means that you can undercut everyone and eat their lunch so incentives are there

part of the problem is that developing treatments is easier and can rely on more conservative, safer assumptions while cures require more early stage risky research

besides chronic diseases that do have cures aren't considered chronic anymore. the rest are problems with insurance that doesn't want to cover single expensive cure over cheaper but recurrent treatment that might add up to more

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

This is wrong.

It's applying a good observation incorrectly.

There's enough awful greedy shit to keep us busy. No inventing more of it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

OP in 1939* "Why isn't there a cure for the consumption?! must be because the travelling physicians wouldn't make any money!"

This is a moronic take.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago

citation needed

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Idiotic conspiracy theories are idiotic

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Idiotic coincidence theories are idiotic

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So, it's like if you lose the ability to walk, a wheelchair is the treatment, while spinal reconstruction would be the cure?

That just shows we’re nowhere near the technological advancement needed to develop actual cures—we’re still at the wheelchair stage for most illnesses.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Most of the answers to why a specific drug works are "we dunno but we tried it, compared it to people who didn't get the drug and these guys got better". Medicine is crawling right now and I would love to see it run.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Even going so far to use male mice for experimenting exclusively due to fluctuations of female hormones during cycle (which fuck up statistics)... In some cases leading to less effective medication for women than men.

Guesswork at best...

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