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Comment by marxidad | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone actually make the conscious decision to avoid curing diseases because of its limited profitability?

Sure, there are all sorts of rare diseases that could be cured, but there's no money to do the research. People have fundraisers to try to make it profitable, e.g. [1]

[1] http://www.finleyfighters.com/

Well that's because the diseases are rare. Regardless of profit, it makes no sense to work on a drug that will save 20 lives, when you could work on one that saves 200 lives.

Another part of the problem is that the cost of getting drugs approved is ridiculously high.

Doubtful one person, but a board of directors choosing where to maintain, increase, or reduce investment does. And their legal fiduciary duty is to maximize profits. That is the system's design right there.

"their legal fiduciary duty is to maximize profits" actually is not true. Although it's of course a very common motive.

I would tone the statement down, but it's still true that the number one purpose of a for-profit business is to generate profit. All other activity, in general, is secondary to profit.

It's like saying a human doesn't need to eat. Sure, sometimes healthy people go without food to achieve a goal, and a few rare people sacrifice themselves for the common good. But these people are exceptions to the rule.

It might more profitable to find a cure, but often business is blinded by short term rather than the long game.

I don't think that's true at all. In the UK at least I believe there is some expectation that a limited company will return profits to shareholders, but besides that the shareholders and directors can set the priorities of the company to be anything they want.

If you know of anything to the contrary I would be very interested to hear it!

I'm not sure what there is to tone down. The statement is patently untrue.[1]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor...

You could argue just as well that the number two purpose of an organization is to generate profit. Profit is a necessity to achieve your primary goals. People need to eat, but you'd have to be a pretty uninspired person if your number one purpose is meeting your caloric expenditures.

Not a conspiracy. It is just a matter of where the market incentives are.

It's just, "How business is done" and it's rarely if ever questioned.

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