Is the U.S. Falling Behind in Medical Research?
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
British researchers say they have developed a better test for diagnosing mesothelioma, a fatal lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos.
Let me repeat, British researchers. The research was conducted at the Oxford Centre for Respiratory Medicine and Oxford University. The Oxford Centre is part of Britain’s National Health Service, which some call a “socialized” health care system.
Recently I wrote about the claim that reducing the profit motive part of health care would eliminate innovative medical research. It is widely believed that all important medical research and innovation come from the United States, and that all those other countries with “socialized” health care cannot keep up.
But the truth is, the United States is no longer the only contributor to the world’s medical innovation. Recently T. R. Reid wrote in the Washington Post,
“Any American who’s had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.”
In some ways, the profit motive may actually be hindering innovation in the United States. Some U.S. researchers grumble that their work is being directed by marketing departments and bean counters. Private pharmaceutical and medical technology companies want to get the most return on R&D dollars spent, and increasingly R&D dollars are going into tweaking and updating already profitable health care products rather than into creating something new and innovative. Researchers whose work is funded by government do not have the same constraints.
The truth is, much of the really innovative scientific research in the U.S. is funded by government grants now, and has been for a long time. The private companies don’t want to pay for the “pure” research from which genuine breakthroughs usually come. Scientists who work for universities or other publicly funded facilities are free to conduct research for the sake of learning something rather than for the sake of developing a profitable product.
In the U.S., knowledge gained from taxpayer-funded research is used by private industry to make new products, and this has been true for a long time. The work and testing needed to create new medical products is not insubstantial, and the pharmaceutical industry does spend millions on research. However, it spends a lot more on marketing.
It’s a bit soon to say that the U.S. is genuinely falling behind other countries in the area of scientific research, although it is clear that the U.S. is less dominant than it once was. Science and education are not exactly budget priorities in the U.S., whereas other countries are investing large sums in science and universities. As a result, these days the U.S. is no longer the place where all hot-shot scientists around the world want to work.
But because we are in the grip of an insane ideology that says “government is always bad, and the private markets are always better,” we are not even able to have a rational conversation about our national priorities. Instead, we get ourselves worked into demented frenzies over “death panels.”
Oh, about the mesothelioma test — the BBC reports that testing for the presence of a particular protein in lung fluid provides a tool for diagnosing mesothelioma that is more accurate and less invasive than the current test, which requires scraping cells from the lungs to test for cancer.
— Barbara O’Brien
