Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

Notably, the headline here oversells the actual content.

Goldman is rightly pointing out that gene therapy cures require heavy research but don't provide long term revenue streams.

It doesn't claim that they shouldn't be pursued, or that people should be kept sick. It doesn't even say gene therapy companies offering cures are bad investments! Rather, it points out that they offer high returns over limited durations, and will have to constantly hunt new treatments and target popular diseases. All of which, I note, describes Gilead perfectly.

I think you and Goldman are both right, while the headline writer is misunderstanding the actual memo.

And when you run out of patients to cure, just start making up new diseases to treat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex#Society_and_cul...

> Genital herpes simplex was not always stigmatised. It was merely a cold sore in an unusual place until the 1970s. As late as 1975, a study of "Psychological morbidity in a clinic for sexually transmitted disease" does not mention herpes simplex because at that time, no significant morbidity problem (i.e. mental anxiety or illness) was associated with the virus.

> Pedro Cuatrecasas states, "during the R&D of acyclovir (Zovirax), marketing [department of Burroughs Wellcome] insisted that there were 'no markets' for this compound. Most had hardly heard of genital herpes..." Thus, marketing the medical condition—separating the 'normal cold sore' from the 'stigmatized genital infection' was to become the key to marketing the drug, a process now known as 'disease mongering'.

> Since the creation of the herpes hype, some people experience negative feelings related to the condition following diagnosis, in particular if they have acquired the genital form of the disease. Feelings can include depression, fear of rejection, feelings of isolation, fear of being found out, and self-destructive feelings. These feelings usually lessen over time. Much of the hysteria and stigma surrounding herpes stems from a media campaign beginning in the late 1970s and peaking in the early 1980s. Multiple articles were worded in fear-mongering and anxiety-provoking terminology, such as the now-ubiquitous "attacks", "outbreaks", "victims", and "sufferers". At one point, the term "herpetic" even entered the popular lexicon. The articles were published by Reader's Digest, U.S. News, and Time magazine, among others. A made-for-TV movie was named Intimate Agony. The peak was when Time magazine had 'Herpes: The New Scarlet Letter' on the cover in August 1982, forever stigmatizing the word in the public mind

...are they wrong about this?

It feels very much like a "shoot the messenger" response. GS isn't saying this is a good outcome, or even that gene therapy companies don't deserve investment. They're just claiming that the existing revenue model for drug companies won't lead to success here. The obvious defense of that claim is "if it's true, saying it isn't a sin".

I mean, I'm not sure Goldman is intending to make an argument for public healthcare and state-funded medical R&D, but in practice that's what this is.

Imagine a corporate AI trained with empathetic traits as its primary goal and with its secondary goal, profits. I wonder if it would decide vaporizing certain individuals at Goldman Sachs would be more empathetic overall to humanity while improving their corporate image and stock evaluation.

This sounds cute, but isn't really true. In a competitive market, there is still an incentive to find cures. If company A has a treatment with the properties you describe on the market, and company B comes out with a cure, guess who's going to get all the business?