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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Microblog Memes
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Point 1 is easy: yes a single company might care more about treatment over prevention, but there exist more than one company. The first to develop the cure easily outcompetes all the others. And this is demonstrably true, since we have tons of vaccines for all kinds of illnesses. Ergo, it is in companies' best interest to develop cures, so they can remain competitive.
Point 2 is also a bit silly. Tons of medicinal research is done using donated funds. There are a lot of researchers working on cancer cures. But "cancer" is a very broad category of disease, there will never be a single cure. Instead we focus on cures and treatments of specific types of cancer, and we do find cures every now and then.
W.r.t. telomere research, it's certainly interesting but the link between telomeres and cancer/aging is all still fairly weak. There's not much evidence anything there actually works. That's also why funding in that area is lacking; more promising fields are being explored instead.
I think you're missing the point: any company making lots of money off cancer therapies will lose out after a cure behind available. That's point 1. Then point 2 is a point about how large corporations work, i.e. they will not do something against their own financial interests, even if it is in the interests of everyone, cf. weapons manufacturers and oil drillers.
If you accept these, then a possible outcome is that there's no corporate interest in curing cancer once and for all.
You're missing that in a free market, companies will try to compete with one another. Strictly focusing on treatment is far too risky an endevour if another company is working on a cure.
It's all risk-reward. A company with a cure is certain customers will come to them, as anyone would pick a cure over treatment. Additionally, they can ask for a high price: it's your only option to be cured after all! So therefore, a cure is low-risk high-reward. Exactly what investors like. It's also why there is a lot of research going into curing cancer, which disproves your hypothesis.
If company A does treatments but company B cures, then B stands to make a lot of money and A sees their revenue stream cut off overnight. This means that in order to remain competitive, A must also research a cure. It's in their financial interest, as it is the only guaranteed way to keep making money.
The reason we don't have an amazing cure for all cancers yet is because cancer is difficult to cure, not because there isn't any funding. We've already cured a couple types of cancer, but no one cancer is exactly the same.