Here’s a story to watch for sure. A cheap drug called DCA has demonstrated the ability to kill cancer cells. Not just one type, mind, but apparently most cancer cells in general.
In cancer cells, the main cell body produces energy through something called glycolysis, and scientists thought that was because the usual process was impossible, thanks to irreparably damaged mitochondria. DCA revives the mitochondria, and the mitochondria also tell the cell to die like a normal cell (it’s this cellular immortality that makes a cell cancerous).
This is fantastic, world-changing news, no? Here’s the rub: though the drug is relatively safe and has demonstrated the ability to kill human cancer cells in animals and outside the body, it has no patent. That means it can be manufactured for very low cost, and could be the dream drug that mostly ends the scourge of cancer. But that it has no patent also means no drug company stands to reap the enormous profits that usually go to the manufacturers of revolutionary drugs.
So several questions are in order. Will this drug be ignored by the media thanks to the lack of a well-funded pharmaceutical company PR blitz? Who will fund the human trials the drug must undergo before its usefulness is accurately determined? Isn’t this precisely the sort of thing that undermines the fundamental belief of conservatives that an unregulated free market will magically meet all our needs? Might even be time for a little "deus ex marketa" help from the government.
Where there is no profit, there is no profit. Only, in this case, unmitigated common good. An unregulated, profit-above-all system isn’t very good at addressing such a thing. Will "the market" bother?
