This comes about as I sometimes see the fundraising efforts of foundations like the Cancel Council, and Biggest Morning Tea scheme fundraisers, etc. but as nice as they are (wanting to raise money to 'find a cure' for major diseases) I can't help but think that it is ultimately futile as a cure will never happen… because why would the big pharmaceutical corporations kill off their main source of cash? That is 'treating' a disease as opposed to 'Curing' it for good.
I mean, billions have gone into Cancer research and where is the cure?
Who agrees?
Do you think that if a cure is found for a major disease it will be used by the pharma companies?
[Deactivated] on 06/05/2014 - 16:04
Comments
I wish to 'neg' the above entry for various reasons, one being the ludicrous statement:
'To be honest the medical world is pretty shady, no one really prods it or makes a fuss…'
This is complete BS. It is such a competitive research area that it is constantly scrutinised, 'prodded', and 'made a fuss' of. The post above that begins 'It is exactly as you say …' should be either deleted, or at least reopened for the users to 'neg'.
I am not sure the big pharma's are looking for cures. That is done at hospitals and universities. Then if successful a pharma may pick it up. The beauty of competition is that someone would hopefully pick it up. The only issue is whether a prospective cure may be picked up and hidden, but that would require a lot of people in different organisations to keep it secret and I don't think that happens.
Cancer isn't cured because it is not one disease. Some cancers are caused by a virus, so those can be cured by eliminating the virus. Determining the cause is the big issue.
It is kind of ironic that the conspiracy theorists are usually not super bright or educated but believe in super clever people who not only can invent world changing medicines, but are then seemingly overpowered by companies with organisational powers to suppress information across many different organisations.
Conspiracy theories are best left to comic books in my opinion.if you want to look into it why not look at how discoveries enter the pharm world. It typically happens that a university researcher investigates a disease, sometimes looking at a new drug to treat it. Maybe one in a hundred are useful, so the intellectual property is spun out into a small company, where investors fund further R&D, through clinical trials. If the clinical trials are successful the company may be acquired or sell its assets to big pharma (the dream of many research grads). Big pharma then see if they can get it to work and make money from it. Lots of drugs fail during one of the phases of testing.
It is all pretty public along the way, but not many have the intellectual grunt to follow it.
I'm rapt that such a well-written post followed the rubbish before it. I can't top it, but may I add that the original OP may wish to ponder the fact that relatively recently, a humble researcher developed a vaccine that essentially prevents infection with HPV, a virus which causes cervical cancer.
Of course a 'pharma' was required to generate enough of the vaccine to vaccinate every child in Australia before they became susceptible to the cancer (i.e., became sexually active) in a timely/synchronised manner, so with the cooperation of government, that is what happened. The vaccine technology was NOT 'suppressed' by 'big pharma', lest it should eat into the profits they make from supplying drugs to cancer victims. Quite the opposite; they readily agreed to generate the vaccine, to prevent the occurrence of the cancer henceforth.Truth - Big oil crushed the water powered car!
treatments for illnesses improves incrementally through continuing research. the life expectancy of people nowadays is much greater than people 100 years ago.
I mean, billions have gone into Cancer research and where is the cure?
Yea and millions go into the pockets of the staff at the charities that collect this money. Check out the types of cars in some of these charities staff parking lots.
So it's all a scam, just like the Salvos, most of the money is gobbled up in admin fees and other stuff… hardly any left for its original purpose.
I think you missed the sarcasm. it is widely accepted that scientists in Australia are underpaid.
I think it's a huge stretch of the imagination to suggest that the Salvos are a scam. They do a lot of work within the community, and when there's an emergency situation they are generally the ones on the ground doing the hands-on stuff. Sure, those workers you see are volunteers, but even serving sandwiches in an emergency relief shelter still costs money.
Check out the types of cars in some of these charities staff parking lots.
From my understanding, charities receive fairly decent salary sacrificing options on vehicles etc - usually used by such organisations to 'top up' what would otherwise be a pretty average salary, in order to recruit staff.
In addition, it also used to be the case that charities would purchase cars sales tax free, then sell them on the open market at a profit. The more prestige the vehicle, the more profit could be made.
I think about 50-60% of the money you donate to charities gets eaten up by administration cost. Choice Mag did a report on this a few years back.
Being a research scientist in the past, I totally agree that they are underpaid but in the same light I have also seen a few who absolutely 'waste' the grant money given to them.
In fact, research has GREATLY improved the recurrence/ long-term-survival rates (I will not use the word 'cure', as it can be somewhat deceptive re cancers) of various types of cancers in recent years. Are the condescending posters in this thread really so ill-informed and-or lazy that they are not aware of the statistics relating to this? Anyways, as mentioned previously, why is 'negging' of some of these ridiculously worded posts blocked in this thread?!?
Re the 'nice cars in the parking lots', if you ask anyone that has actually WORKED at a medical research institution for any length of time (years), they will tell you that > 95% of medical researchers simply do not drive expensive cars. It is likely that the poster happened past a research institute once during a fund-raiser, to which many 'well-heeled' potential contributors had been invited/ were in attendance, and got the wrong impression. Any actual Australian medical researcher with experience will tell you; they are simply not into 'prestige cars'.As pointed out in another post above, 'cancer' is not one single disease. Thus, it will never have one cure. 'Cancer' refers to a biological process, best described in lay-terms as UNCONTROLLED CELL DIVISION. Because there's hundreds or thousands of different cell-types, all of which behave differently EVEN WHEN NORMAL (let alone, after they become cancerous), no single treatment/'cancer cure' will be effective against all of them, or even the majority of them.
This is why ridiculously overly simplistic statements such as 'Where is THE cure?' grate on those that have actually taken any time to research the facts, or have had them explained to them as cancer-victims, etc.
Why can we not 'neg' this crap?
I think people lose sight of the reason big pharma companies exist. People naively believe the rhetoric and emotion and forget that these multi billion dollar corporations exist to return profits to their shareholders. If they can do something nice along the way that is a bonus, but escalating tiers of managers along the way up the internal hierarchy will be being remunerated based upon financial targets first and foremost. It is highly unlikely that any emotional or philanthropic objectives will be listed as measurable goals on any of the leading execs within the corporation hover I am sure that metrics like EBIT and margin will be well represented.
I don't necessarily think these companies are evil I just think they are efficient at achieving what they are setup and resourced to do, maximise returns to their investors.
I think this might affect the future of humanity in a couple of ways:
- potentially promising treatments might not be invested in/progressed because the business case for profit returns does not add up.
- Product offerings will likely be manipulated to return the greatest profit to the corporation, potentially stretching public health resources in the process.
At the end of the day though I am lead to believe that the thing driving up the costs and blowing out the development timelines is not necessarily the big drug companies, more the approvals process and the administrivia of getting new medicines accepted. Apparently this is particularly so in the US with the FDA. Drug companies have to pay for all of this testingif they want to have their products approvced for sale in the USA.
Re the claim in the above post that:
"… I just think they are efficient at achieving what they are setup and resourced to do, maximise returns to their investors."
Clearly the poster is not aware of the actual success-rate of such companies. In fact, over 95% of them fail entirely (i.e., all 'investor money' is completely lost/ gone forever) within the first couple of years.
So given that that premise is entirely wrong, none of what follows it really bears much consideration.
We put man on the moon and yet we can't find a cure for the common cold.
You have to remember that the common cold virus is difficult to completely cure because it rapidly mutates. So for eg, This year's vaccine might not work next year because by then the virus has developed and matuated so it renders the vaccine useless.
With that said, illnesses are living organisms, so to completely cure them is difficult because we have to stay ahead of the game. Putting man on the moon was just a matter of time.
I recently saw a documentary talking about how we're now in a post-antibiotics era. So illnesses like pnuemonia aren't responding to the meds anymore.
Scary stuff.
wrong. "This year's vaccine" is for influenza, which is NOT the common cold.
That being said, you are right in saying that the common cold virus (rhinovirus and others) is difficult to completely cure because it rapidly mutates.
We don't vaccinate for the common cold - it's symptomatic but non-lethal, and self-containing. Influenza on the other hand, can be deadly.
My apologies.
No worries, common mistake! :)
You are absolutely correct - why will Pharmas kill of their cash cow.
Heck Eli Lily in the US even invented a condition called pre-pms in order to sell more drugs. They even suckered in the public to picking the colour of the capsules.
been happening for years….. look up listerine….. halitosis was pretty much unheard of until they 'discovered' it in the 1920's
Perhaps its just me, but to medically identify something and give it a name, then trying to cure it, isn't it a bit overkill to say that its just made up so they could make money?
If you look at chemists now-a-days, the market is in vitamins. Lots of people flock to buy and stock up on vitamins and supplements that they don't need. So most of the time, they're consuming mutivits and such and just poop it out.. a real waste of money of you ask me…
Hey peaches, I agree entirely with your second passage (the great "vitamins con" of our era), but unfortunately your first passage is worded so, erm, "abstractly", that I have no idea what you actually mean by it. Very often the peeps that first "medically identify" something are the same peeps that name it (nothing too outrageous there, surely?), and more importantly, manage to invent (/market) a cure for it. It's really not that surprising.
Let me chuck in a digital curve-ball though, from way left field… It seems pretty obvious to me that many computer viruses/trojans/worms/ etc. are probably calculated efforts to make money, by way of a subsequently released/sold "cure"…
I'm thinkin', maybe they generate the malicious software, then generate the software to "completely remove it from your system", then set about infecting the 'putes of poor unsuspecting saps wordwide with their mal-ware… (easily done 'en masse' via file-sharing sites; no one will report anything that happens to them on those, because they don't like to admit that they use them, least of all to authorities).I betcha this is happening 'left right and centre'…
Peaches?
What I mean is that maybe there is something out there (lets say a disease or disorder) that doesn't have a name yet, so they name it, then find a "cure" for it. It may not always be the case as Islund is suggesting that people are just greedy money makers, yes, there may be a few of them out there. But my belief is that people in the medical profession have entered that pathway in hopes of bettering humanity. If they are making things up to create cures for them then they're going against what they'd want to ultimately do. It doesn't really make sense. Plus, the people who "invent" a disorder/disease are usually in completely different professions to those who discover/find/treat the people with the illness.
I think that it would be smart, yes, but have you thought that a lot of comp viruses (correct me if I'm wrong here) are the product of other people who are looking to harvest personal info? Why would a company want to release a virus, to sell antivirus programs when they could use the info and sell it/use it to steal money straight from people's bank accounts? Also, as I understand, comp viruses, work sort of like their cousins and are always changing etc. So you've got to stay ontop of the game with them as well. Unfortunately there will always be people out there preying on the interwebs. So you could be right, in theory it works, but there are countless variables to consider.
Some of those comments reminded me of the plot from the novel The constant gardener by John le carré.
One of the biggest big Pharma scams are statin drugs - they've managed to convince the public that high cholesterol is dangerous and we should all be on these dangerous drugs that have terrible side effects. Read 'The Cholesterol Myth'! Statin drugs are Big Pharmas biggest profit makers worldwide - doctors in the US are given a 'finders fee' for every new patient they put on them!
It's dangerous and irresponsible to suggest to anyone that they stop taking medications provided by their doctor, and somewhat off topic for this post. For an informed view of this, try http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-international-networ…
That was a lot nicer than what I was going to type out as a reply
High cholestrol is dangerous. It could lead to things like fat build up in your arteries and eventually lead to blocking blood flow and enough oxygen reaching your muscles etc.
I'd say it's possible that at some point past or future, someone in a large pharmaceutical company might raise the idea of buying up and hiding "the cure" to something, however I doubt the idea would be taken up. The backlash when that act eventually hit the news would be severe, and I doubt the industry is peopled only by Dr Evil clones.
But there are current-day examples of "the cure" being offered. For example, until fairly recently Hepatitis C treatment has taken months or years. There's now a 12-week treatment available which has a cure rate of up to 90%. The pharmaceutical companies aren't missing out though, as the per-unit production cost for the 12 weeks of pills is apparently around $100, but they're charging $150,000. Basically that's their premium/reward/payback for investing the money to develop, test and manufacture "the cure".
We might look at this as price gouging, but I think that's empty criticism when it comes from people who won't fund such development themselves. Over the decades, governments worldwide have moved away from funding science of this sort, leaving it instead to private enterprise. We can't be surprised that those organisations must make a profit to continue to exist.
Them's wise words above, by zambuck. I might add that the pharmas only have a limited time in which to recoup the (massive) investment they outlaid to actually 'invent' the cure, let alone any profits. The patents run out after a certain number of years from the initial filing of the patent, and after that any pharma can produce a chemically identical copy of 'the cure' (drug), and sell it for whatever they want, on the free world market. That is why we have these massive discrepancies between the basic cost of production, and the cost to buy, re new drugs which are still 'patent-protected'; because the actual inventors of them are desperately trying to recoup the massive amounts of money that it actually cost them to invent 'the cure', in the short time-window that they have before anyone is quite legally allowed to make and sell the cure for whatever they like.
It becomes a highly politically charged issue, because it takes a bit of forward thinking to understand it. It's not as simple as "they can make each pill for $2, yet they're selling each pill for $200". It's even more complex when you realise that the pharmas are funding many exploratory ventures, i.e., they are investing in research attempting to find 'cures' (or even better, vaccines) for a lot of things, only a small minority of which may be successful, at some distant point in time.
Thus, when they actually succeed in inventing a successful cure or vaccine, they simply HAVE to charge through the nose for it, in order to remain afloat, and keep searching/researching new cures/vaccines. This is where government should step in, where justified; to subsidise the drugs or vaccines for members of the community that cannpot afford them, when they are still in the (relatively short) window of time that they are "patent-protected" and the pharma companies are allowed to charge what they want for them (and arguably justifiably, do so in order to remain afloat).
Hmmm. Long post.
There is a big scam in research. It is explained here:
http://betaboston.com/footnote/2014/05/06/the-exploitative-e…Big pharma has nothing to do with it. In fact, big pharma, by using patents, actually work against secrecy.
Patents (Patent= clear in latin) must disclose exactly how to achieve the result. This information is well indexed and freely available. Conversely, many discoveries made and published in journals cost thousands of dollars to access, slowing down research and making it more costly.If you want to complain about something, I suggest asking why taxpayer funded research is locked away from other researchers due to monopolistic practises of scientific journals.
You raise a valid point skyva, but take some solace from the fact that many of the major medical research funding bodies now refuse to issue any grants, unless the results of the research arising from those grants are published in an 'open access' (i.e., free for anyone to access) journal; of which there are now hundreds, if not thousands, traversing all fields of medicine.
In answer to your question, yes but for some serious dollars. The new Hep C cure costs about US$1000 a day and a course is US$80,000 with a 90% cure rate (you'd be spewing if you were in the 10%)
http://io9.com/new-hepatitis-c-cure-hailed-as-a-breakthrough…
I will say that I have had the same thoughts regarding all of the "charities" that are associated with chronic diseases. It's an industry in itself.
sadly, of course they are all scams. they all use dodgy accounting practices to skim what ever money out of the donations they can.
dodgy ceo of charity says
yes, of course that new foundation owned 11 million dollar private jet is just a cost of doing business, even if its mostly only used to aid in the well orchestrated doping regime of the charitys name sake….
fyi, lance armstrong used
hiserr i meanpharmstrongi mean livestrongs 11 million private jet to aid in avoiding detection for his banned substance abuse as well as to fly friends to holiday destinations etc…. with almost zero dollars from livestrong ever going anywhere near cancer prevention etc. it was all either spent internally (salaries/lawyers/etc) or pumped back into self promotion to make more money.i did read somewhere a while back that even the "best" charities only funnel something like 30% of donated funds to actually helping the cause, the rest if taken up in "costs" (agian, lawyers/million dollar salaries etc etc)
edit: in this vid his team mate talking about using lances private yet to blood dope http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-teammate-i-saw-lance-armstron…
Cures are not a thing. Cures are the realm of scams, stories and mystics. Medicine develops treatments. Think about it - what real world cures for what diseases do you know of?
Cancer is not just one thing. Cancer is an umbrella term for abnormal cell growth, which happens in many different ways. A single type of treatment will never be the answer to cancer.
The effectiveness of our treatments for cancer have increased dramatically in the last 100 years, with the last 20 years including some massive leaps forward. Odds of you dying from cancer once diagnosed are much, much, much lower than they were.
Conclusion: The research to "cure" cancer is actually being quite successful and provided to the populace.
I agree totally with 2 and 3. 1 is a bit pessimistic when applied across all diseases. I'm assuming that your standard for a cure is that it 100% cures some people, and not that it cures 100% of people. An expectation of the latter would be an example of a perfect solution fallacy.
Erm, re #1, where do I start? If you meant to restrict #1 to cancer, or drugs, you forgot to do either, thus the assertion seems very naive/ overly-simplistic.
Surgery, for example, can absolutely cure many diseases.
Antibiotics can also cure many diseases.
I really do not understand what you were trying to imply here. For example, if a patient has become infected with an organism, causing a disease, and a drug is administered that eliminates that organism completely from their body, resulting in the permanent disappearance of all symptoms, THAT'S a cure, isn't it? Or do you define 'cure' differently?
I certainly expressed that idea poorly. I remember while writing it thinking I should point out surgery. You could also consider things like setting a fractured bone a cure. I go on about treatment like that isn't a cure but it is.
I was trying to get at this underlying miracle cure concept that people who use the term Big Pharma as a derogatory term seem to be talking about. A one off or very short treatment pill with no side effects. Something that it would be relatively hard to make money on.
The thing McCoy gives to this old lady is the kind of thing I think they have in mind when they talk about Big Pharma holding back the cure to cancer: http://youtu.be/MMaGnpVaSGQ
For some diseases, yes, I think companies are trying to find effective remedies and cures. Cancer is one of them. Think about diseases such as pancreatic cancer that have a 5% survival rate after 5 years. Plenty of profit opportunity there to develop a drug that allows the sufferer to live out their normal life span.
I don't subscribe to the highly pessimistic point of view that companies aren't interested in curing various cancers, and that they are only motivated to suck money out of the patient for a few years before letting them die. It just doesn't make sense. For the company that develops an effective breast, lung, pancreatic, bowel, etc cancer treatment there are billions of dollars in profits to tap for years to come.
One area where I believe profit motivation does hurt all of us is antibiotic development. On the one hand we have patients extremely overeager to use antibiotics even when they can't work, so the companies are quite pleased to provide them. That rapidly brings forward the days when pretty much all of our current antibiotic stock will be useless. The flip side is that companies are not keen at all to develop new antibiotics as they would be forced to stock pile them and use only as a last resort. Who would want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars looking for a new wonder antibiotic only to be told they can't sell it?
Sigh, they are not instructed that they have to stockpile it for free; obviously that would sink any pharma in a heart-beat (where did you get that idea from?). In such rare events, they are contracted (i.e. paid) to stockpile it, by interested parties (governments). In fact, it's the best thing that could happen to them; they get paid to make it, and the large-scale efficacy of it is never even tested, provided an epidemic does not occur before it reaches its 'use-by' date.
There's been a fair bit in the media recently about a flu drug that may be a case in point.
Pharmaceutical companies are just that, companies. It is ultimately a business. There are millions and millions of dollars invested into development of a potential drug. That drug may not even make it on the market because of side effect issues.
So millions of dollars poured into research, taking about 10-15 years on average for a new drug now-a-days to hit the shelves means companies need to 'be wise' in their decision on what type of drug that want to create. You want to develop a drug that's easy and for a chronic condition.
Non-profit organisations is the way to go - if the whole world rallied together to find the cure for cancer or HIV I'm sure we would reach it in a much shorter time. It's a shame, sometimes, we do live in a world where money matters.
If we invested the same money from luxury goods, the entertainment industry, if we placed doctors, pharmacists, engineers etc on a higher pedestal than celebrities, singers, actors and actresses then we might be a healthier world.
It disappoints me that the world find it okay to highlight what Justin Beiber is doing or what the next Gaga music video is about but they take for granted the advances in health, medications that they or a relative use daily, hospital care and procedures, it's funny. The priorities of the world. That's my personal 2 cents
OK, when cancer afflicts a child, or even a "young-to-middle-aged" person, it is a tragedy, but in the remainder (majority) of cases, it is much less so. How about this for an alternative point of view:
Perhaps quality of life during youth should be prioritised over quantity of life into old age. This would at least maximise the chances that the most people possible got to enjoy life, while they were young and best able to enjoy it (greatest good for the greatest number, with an 'age-twist').
It would mean taking 'unorthadox' measures like prioritising medical funding for poor (financially) young people over the medical needs of even 'rich' (financially) older people.
So I'm talking about a system where the MAIN determinant of what level of medical care/resources/etc. that you have access to/ are provided with is determined solely by your age.
Just an abstract thought (that has been explored by many social commentators in the past; it seems relevant to this thread though, which has become quite 'deep'!)Any thoughts on this anyone?
I have heard this argument before and funnily enough, made the same argument to a religion assignment I did back in highschool. It is controversial, but it does make sense. The only problem is that as a young person, they are not yet fully aware so to say that they are enjoying their life to the "fullest" is true, but that is because as children, your wolrd revolves around you. Most people would say that they are happiest when they were children (who isn't nostalgic about their care-free childhood?), but the opportunities and experiences that one gains through maturity and aging isn't always available to children. To a lot of older people who have lived through those things, they have the ability to soundly say that they have lived a relatively "full" life. Many people also judge how "well" they've lived their lives for differently. Some people want to be rich and famous, others want to live life on the edge, some want to travel, others just like a quiet life. It all measures out to be different. Another thought is that in a state that someone is ill, they may not be in a condition to judge that for themselves.
So to say that judging the quality of a person's life can be determined by the person themselves, is difficult to suggest because this all comes down to perspective. To a child, a teenager, a middle aged adult and an elderly person, their quality of life will all mean different things. The other problem with your suggestion is that there will always be people out there who will complain or a bit more on the selfish side of things. Financially fortunate people generally have the funds to pay for any medical expenses, those who are less fortunate do not. But just because those who are well off are financially in a good position, it doesn't mean that they are generous enough to pay for those who cant afford this.
I don't even know if I interpreted what you said correctly, I probably didn't. But there you go.
I wonder why Australia spends millions of dollars keeping alive convicted murders when people are unable to pay for their medications that are not covered by PBS.
E.G. a woman with HER2 brain metasis can't get the 2 essential and most beneficial chemotherapy meds covered by PBS - Tykerb and Herceptin. Only 1 or the other, whilst studies have shown that adjuvant therapy has far better results than Tykerb and Xolanda - which are both covered. Tykerb, the cheap out of it and Herceptin, still costs approximately $3500 a month. Almost half of what it costs to keep a convicted murder in prison.
A person who has taken a life Or a person who wants to keep their life?
It is in pharma's interest to skew their research in the direction of the most profitable (ie rich country) illnesses and markets, and ignore the diseases affecting the Third world. I feel that we need more Government funded "pure" science research, and the scientists given the respect and career paths they deserve….but I can't see that happening in Australia any time soon.
I think if you watch that new movie named The Cure (2014) most of your questions may be answered :)
Big pharma isn't interested in curing diseases, but rather in palliative treatments for chronic diseases. They don't spend money on new antibiotic research for instance. Instead they spend it on useless placebos for psychiatric diseases, cholesterol lowering drugs that don't reduce mortality, analgesics rather than treatments to cure painful diseases like arthritis, etc. Though I need to add the qualifier, that inert placebos work well as long as people are gullible enough to believe they will work. You can 'cure' depressions with flour if you stick it inside a capsule resembling Prozac.
Pharmaceutical companies, like all publicly listed companies, have no interest in helping people. They are just evil corporations doing their best to profit from other peoples' misery in order to make their rich executives and rich shareholders even richer.
I agree with your mentality, but pretty sure pharma companies develop psychiatric drugs to turn people into drug dependant zombies, if only they were kind enough to leave it at placebos…
You are too naive to think of Cancer as being that simple.
Imagine pouring a bottle of dye in water, then extracting the dye out of the water straight away, are you able to do this with such pure simplicity?
Yea after billions of $$$ youhd hope so. But your analogy is fair.
Diseases always mutate, So It makes it very hard even for reasearch companies to always find a new treatment or cure.
By the time it becomes available it almost has no effect.
So more research is undergone and a more powerfull drug is created.Any donations/charities that contribute most of its money goes into research, there is just not enough resources. It may seem that large amounts of money are being donated, But these charities also need a portion of its money to exist.
Whatever you may have heard that we are overpowered by the government or whatever they are just all conspiracies. It just needs time and before you know it, each problem will be solved, like a puzzle.
and Tony Abbott plans to collect the $7 to fund into 'medical research'. what a joke, more like, funding politicians fat bulging bank accounts!
It is exactly as you say, however it's not so much the charities are connected with it. Typically they collect the cash and they distribute it or invest it into other research companies. In turn those research companies are owned by some parent company who will own patents or research material gained from the efforts, after all that only makes sense.
Finding a cure is one thing and charities will just be happy with the discovery, but distributing it is another which the patent owners are interested in. To be honest the medical world is pretty shady, no one really prods it or makes a fuss because it's seen as 'the good guys' industry just like education. It would seem to me more is reported or investigated about some fat cat corporate CEO's million dollar pay rise rather than a several million dollar increase of XYZ hospital.
/end rant.