Capitalism prioritises investment based on profit, not based on good - eviltoast
  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Yeah, this is a common truism that angry people confuse with actual criticism.

    It would, in fact, be extremely profitable to develop a cure for something chronic. If you could make and sell one pill that cures AIDS, for instance, then you would become very rich (not to mention famous).

    That’s not a defense of capitalism. For-profit healthcare is a dystopian nightmare. When you consider that the AIDS cure would be too expensive for most people to buy, and only poor people would suffer from the disease, you should remember that that’s how it is now! Poor people cannot afford cures available to rich people, cures for preventable diseases, cures for treatable and manageable diseases, cures for addiction and obesity. Poor people cannot afford to stop working long enough to seek treatment for basic aliments.

    So no, scientists and doctors aren’t conspiring to avoid working on cures in favor of treatment for chronic conditions. They’re just going where the money is. They absolutely would cure any disease if it were possible, they just wouldn’t share it with the world.