While I am a fan of capitalism, the free market, and profit…there are times that purely financial concerns…or at least the failure to consider the value of non-monetary rewards…leads to some odd decisions. From New Scientist:
It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs. [...]
The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines.
I suppose that funding research for a potentially effective and high-demand product that has side-effects, as a stepping stone to researching and creating demand for a patentable, lower-side-effect treatment makes too much sense.