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Taxes obviously. I'd be happy to live in a society where medication research is based on public need instead of profit margin. A drug such as this would save money for the NHS or any other western countries public health system ( bar the USA ) in the long term.

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There is nothing stopping the gov't from doing that right now. Unfortunately, most of the drug development efforts by public entities have had a really poor track record.

Oh yes I imagine the pharmaceutical industry wouldn't fight such a move at all, would breeze right in.

You talk about the gov't like it's powerless! You do realize that the US gov't extracted billions of dollars in concessions from the pharmaceutical industry during the Obamacare roll-out?

>Unfortunately, most of the drug development efforts by public entities have had a really poor track record.

Could you quantify this? Is it because they're tackling the very difficult diseases and not the low-hanging (profitable) fruit?

The polio vaccine was developed with federal money and was provided for free as a result. There is no way the polio vaccine could have been done more efficiently if the private sector did it.

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