Sure, I’m spreading conspiracy theories. Not like I left chronic disease research and restarted in a completely unrelated field for this exact problem.

I didn’t work for Pfizer, but I did work for another pharmaceutical company you would recognize the name of if you live in North America. And let me tell you, while the labs are trying to do good, the executives and management are rotten to the core. Unless it’s a life threatening infectious disease, they will not prioritize the research. It’s not active suppression most of the time, it’s willful negligence and underfunding. I got into the field hopeful, and left jaded.

[–] SCB 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It’s not active suppression most of the time,

This is your initial claim, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Also, apologies if I come off as aggressive at any point, I still have a lot of residual anger over what I experienced with my former career.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

No, my initial claim was:

Curing diabetes isn’t as profitable as selling insulin. That’s why it doesn’t get funded.

Then you opined that whoever comes up with a cure wins, which should be true in a perfect world. In fact, most researchers would agree with you.

Unfortunately, a lot of MBA’s in these pharma companies don’t see it that way, and my reply to you was trying to outline the realities of that. I focussed more on the patent-and-bury part because this is the one method less known to the public (and less used), but underfunding research that can do a public good but isn’t profitable is a common technique by corporations in research, regardless of the discipline.

My bad, I thought this was common knowledge, but it probably isn’t for people who aren’t in PhD/post-doc research roles.