Comment by travmatt
5 years ago
Any business who followed your logic would be then vulnerable to the first competitor who was willing to sell the cure instead. To prevent that from happening, it would take a global conspiracy of every company who could develop said drug, along with the complicity of every scientist who knew about said research and who would be tempted to develop or leak its it themselves.
Established players have no incentive to fund the research and every incentive to keep the difficulty of curing illnesses at scale high to keep new players out.
There is no need for a global conspiracy. Just a little lobbying.