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One-shot cures for diseases are not great for business—more specifically, they’re bad for longterm profits—Goldman Sachs analysts noted in an April 10 report for biotech clients, first reported by CNBC.
The investment banks’ report, titled “The Genome Revolution,” asks clients the touchy question: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The answer may be “no,” according to follow-up information provided.
[...] The potential to deliver “one shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies... While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.
[...] Ars reached out to Goldman Sachs, which confirmed the content of the report but declined to comment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:10PM
These "analysts" have succombed to the kind of fallacious economic thinking that was dismantled over 150 years ago.
Of course it is NOT more profitable to squeeze productivity from sick people; it would make far more sense to offer sick people a cure, and then have them pay for that cure out of their healthy productivity—the cure would be an investment, and could indeed be organized as such, by payment via a loan.
What derails this sensible conclusion is a decidedly NON-free-market wart on society: The Welfare State, which forces a dwindling population of healthy, productive people to pay for the ongoing maintenance of unhealthy, unproductive people.