This is a trope regurgitated by people who don't know any better. It would imply that pharma are deliberately avoiding research directions that would generate cures, or (even worse) discovering cures and putting them in a dark secret safe somewhere.
The reality is that drug development is serendipitous and really hard, and any company seeing even a sniff of a drug that works will throw everything behind making that drug a success. During the early stages of investigation of a promising new agent, the animal data can't predict much, and certainly can't predict whether something is "curative" - this would only be seen during human trials, after which hiding that benefit would be close to impossible. It's just not how it works.
There are plenty of examples of actual (rather than functional) cures being developed and marketed:
1) Previously-untreated DLBCL (a type of blood cancer) can be cured. CHOP chemotherapy cured ~35-40% of cases. The addition of rituximab boosted that to 60-65%. There then followed a long string of failed phase III studies (probably billions spent, cumulatively) trying to beat rituximab + CHOP, and finally in recent years there has been some success. So: multiple attempts across multiple pharma companies, trying to improve on an already impressive cure rate... not much evidence of an anti-cure conspiracy.
2) Hepatitis C - cures were discovered and marketed from ~2014 onwards; now ~95% of cases can be cured with a treatment lasting only a couple of months. So: multiple treatments, from multiple pharma companies, which offer a hugely effective cure for a pretty unpleasant disease.
From the human perspective, researchers are people, and they do have their incentives. Making a breakthrough, of any kind, is important for them - even if for their career (but many do genuinely care and want to help humanity as a whole).
From marketing and sales perspective, look at what happen to pharma companies capitalization when Ozempic appeared: a relatively small Elly Lily suddenly got bigger then Merck, Novartis, Roche or Johnson & Johnson. You can hardly call it a long treatment plan with expensive drugs "till the end".
Really, there is a lot of bad things going on in healthcare and pharma industry, but the conspiracy theory "they don't want to invent efficient drugs" really makes no sense when you dig deeper.
An example of “good” pharma would be Hepatitis C. We can now cure that. Although, pharma is charging the lifetime equivalent in order to do that (a treatment can run over $100k and insurance balks at covering it)
So pharma will absolutely develop a cure if they can. They however will still charge you as if you had to take a dose for the rest of your life.
Well yes, Ozempic doesn't solve the habits of a bad diet.
The weight rebound is surely due in little part to removal of hunger suppression as in "hormone rebound", but if you resume eating 5000+ kcal/day because you don't have something that keeps you from doing it, you'll end up in the same situation as before. Ozempic was never meant and is not going to fix your diet. That's a psychological and environmental problem.
Not really. Note that it's not taking ozempic for life vs taking nothing for life, but actually taking ozempic for life vs taking ozempic and 5 different medications for life when obesity related illnesses bite you in the ass. So generally ozempic still is "good" pharma (and the plot twist is that almost every pharma is good pharma!).
Lots of treatments start expensive and then come down in cost as competitors step in.
> From the human perspective, researchers are people, and they do have their incentives. Making a breakthrough, of any kind, is important for them - even if for their career (but many do genuinely care and want to help humanity as a whole).
Researchers are people, but they are paid and directed. They can't go off and do what they like. The corporation directs them, and they are paid for their efforts. Researchers (and all working people) aren't doing what is right - they are doing what they are paid to do.
All the financial upside for pharmaceuticals is in prolonged treatments. It is a 'long sickness' industry. This is perhaps too bitter a pill to swallow for most, so this is where marketing and education come in with the sugar.
For cancer in particular, pharmas don't (and mostly can't) just target a drug to chronically treat some cancer over the long term but not cure it. Instead they pick some target that's believed to contribute to development (/ metastasis / treatment resistance / whatever) in whatever cancer, and make a drug to interfere with it or to target an immune response to cells that make it. If it's stable, nontoxic, and looks potentially effective enough they'll take it to clinical trials. During clinical trials they'll find out whether it does nothing, gives you a few extra months, or has a chance at curing the disease. Usually the answer is that it does nothing or almost nothing, or isn't worth the side effects, and then the company wasted its time and money. Drugs with a chance to cure common types of cancer can be enormous successes -- see eg Herceptin.
Cancers are difficult diseases and it's rare to find something that reliably cures them. But drug companies aren't pulling their punches. Like they would never say "oh this drug clears breast cancer too reliably, we should make it less effective so that people will be more likely to die but also might take it for longer".
Chicken pox, polio, hepatitis C, dracunculiasis, yaws, malaria (on the way of it), tuberculosis, syphilis, everything that can be killed with antibiotics, rubella...
Halcyon days.
Type I diabetes - no, but this is a condition in which the body attacks the part of itself that makes insulin. So by the time it happens, it's too late. Sadly, we're generally bad at understanding and preventing autoimmune diseases, but this needs more basic research, not drugs.
Type II diabetes - essentially a lifestyle condition. May be functionally cured in some/many cases with strict lifestyle interventions. Ironically, GLP-1s may help move some people towards a functional cure.
Cancer - yes, where possible. The open secret is that the best way to fight cancer is to not get it in the first place, or failing that to catch it very early, but these are issues of lifestyle and public health policy - both of which we're currently very bad at optimising, as a species.
> All the financial upside for pharmaceuticals is in prolonged treatments.
Except for the examples to the contrary.
Improving standard of care for 100 is less risky/more profitable because you have more shots at an expensive process with a high failure rate. And it is a lower bar to improve patient care than to permanently fix a medical mystery. But there is another factor. Focusing on treatment/management over cure most likely maximizes the positive impact on patients within the the constraints you work under.
There have been at least three new major treatments for a chronic thing I have that received FDA approval over my lifetime. Those treatments have had a massive impact on my quality of life, ability to have a career, etc. I don't believe that happens for me if we allocate to cures.
The point I am making is that you are a/ not getting cured, and b/ paying a lot of money. The reason for this, is this is best strategy for maximising profits. Its really the exact same model as your local heroin/crack dealer.
Please set me straight if those conditions differ in your case.
Profits are what pharma companies want.
The consumer is mostly labouring under the illusion that companies want the best for you. They are not your mum. They want what's best for them. And, most people would do the same - no one is gifting anyone health.
All I'm saying is let's drop the illusions and fantasy and call a spade a spade.
Again, if your choice is improving quality of care for 100 conditions or trying to moonshot your way to curing one disease, more patients benefit from the former even if pharma also profits more.