"There’s more money to be made investing in drugs that will extend cancer patients’ lives by a few months than in drugs that would prevent cancer in the first place. That’s one of the findings from the work of Heidi Williams, an M.I.T. economics professor and recent MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant winner, who studied the problem along with Eric Budish, a University of Chicago economics professor, and Ben Roin, as…
At any point in time, patients have the choice across the spectrum of mitigations or cures. Cures are more difficult to produce but if they are available patients will choose them every time. Companies that produce mitigating medicine are counting on their ability to recoup investment before a cure materializes at some point in the future. If a cure becomes available, the value of their mitigation research goes to zero. Biomedical companies make bets that, if a disease looks particularly difficult to cure, mitigation will retain its value long enough to return a profit as a product.
Most biomedical research companies are looking for cures because it allows them to do an end run around their competitors and grab most of the profits. Every biomedical company wants a cure because it completely displaces competitive mitigation strategies and therefore allows them to collect virtually all of the profits. Mitigation is the fallback position when cures fail. But biomedical research is looking for the cure that will give the a naturally monopoly position by default.