What guarantees are there that under ancap, people with rare diseases (affecting fewer than 200,000 people) will not be left without medication because it would simply be unprofitable to develop and sell them (given such a small number of consumers)?
анонимный вопрос
Answered by Alex Murin
The strangest question I have ever encountered. And why is it profitable for states to fund scientists who conduct such research? Perhaps because funding scientists is profitable in general? They make useful discoveries, and over the last 100 years, these have become increasingly frequent, useful, and interesting.
A company that develops a new drug gains notoriety. This is currently the best advertisement a pharmaceutical company can imagine. One could hire a hundred PR agents to write that this company’s vitamin C and plantain are the best in the world. But many people sell vitamin C and herbal mixtures. So, most of the time, PR agents would be producing information junk. Instead, one could hire another dozen scientists to develop a drug for a rare disease. Journalists from many publications would gather to see and report on the discovery, the company’s name would hit the top news of all websites for a couple of days, and remain in the top of specialized publications for another month. In addition to that rare pill, the company produces hundreds of other less rare ones. A discovery means new clients, the respect of doctors, and the attention of their patients.
Regarding sales: selling medications is always profitable. Just as it was profitable in primitive society, when a hunter brought the shaman the best piece of meat for a pot of magic potion, so it is in a post-industrial society, where hundreds of pharmaceutical companies make aspirin and millions of pharmacies sell it. Perhaps it would be unprofitable to keep a rare medicine in a pharmacy, but nothing stops it from being ordered. Currently, restrictions on the online sale of medications are created by states.
The role of the state in the production of drugs for rare diseases is not very obvious. In funding scientists? They can be funded by charitable foundations and insurance companies. It is always profitable for an insurer for their patient to be healthy and pay premiums regularly, rather than lying on their deathbed.
By the way, the famous EU Directive 141/2000 (reduction of regulations in the development of orphan drugs) was adopted precisely thanks to private initiative, and not at the suggestion of any state. EURORDIS, an association supporting patients with rare diseases, was one of the organizations that contributed to the development and adoption of such an initiative.
