Microblog Memes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Idiotic conspiracy theories are idiotic

Did you confuse capitalism with morality again?

This has got to stop happening

Ah yes that's why incredibly breakthroughs in medical science have completely stopped happening!

Or, chronic diseases which have been effectively cured aren't considered chronic diseases anymore?

Capitalism or not the claim would be true, chronic diseases are defined by their lack of effective cure.

Tiring ass conspiracy theorists.

Just saying, "it's capitalism's fault," is not entirely incorrect, but it is definitely oversimplifying. Chronic diseases are complex, incredibly challenging to solve, and can vary a great degree by individual.

The government gave the NIH a billion dollars to study long COVID and the result ... fuck-all. Literally all they did was loosely define some things that the enormous and growing patient community already knew. No treatments, no diagnostics, nothing.

To be clear, capitalism certainly plays a substantially antagonistic role in solving chronic illness, but just throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it either.

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.

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