Well, public health would seem to be pretty much the textbook definition of a governmental function even if you generally favor less government rather than more. As a resident of a high Lyme disease-incidence state who does a lot of outdoors activities, I find it annoying (though that's not really the right word) that we know how to make Lyme vaccines, and in fact give them to dogs, but there seems little urgency in providing them to humans. The previously approved vaccine (Lymerix) was admittedly not the most effective and possibly had some incidence of (never statistically linked) side effects. However, given the rapid increase of Lyme cases in certain areas, this seems like a case where the government could fairly easily make a vaccine available for what is clearly a public health problem.
I'm all for government funding lots of research for health, science, etc. My desire is for people to also figure out ways to also contribute in other ways to have more citizen sponsored research, for example. We have Kickstarter projects that need $2 million to be funded.
How about a way for people to sponsor medical research or basic science in an effective manner? A lot of money that goes into some charities is used for marketing to grow even bigger.
You are trolling, correct? Someone says that the government should fund research into Lyme disease, and you post a link to an RPG on Kickstarter?
How about a way for people to sponsor medical research or basic science in an effective manner?
Because people have _no idea_ what to sponsor, and really, nor can we expect every individual to do the level of research required to make sure their money is invested properly. People have jobs and lives. It's much better for us to collectively invest in a single pot, and give a body (say, a government) the ability to appoint someone whose job it is to effectively invest it.
We already have vaccines that work for humans. They were retracted in the 90s because of public outcry that the vaccines "cause arthritis" in much the way that people today outcry that vaccines "cause autism".
“Lyme disease is the only infection I know of where we have a safe and effective vaccine, but it’s not available to the public,” says Dr. Allen Steere, the physician who uncovered the disease.
>because of public outcry that the vaccines "cause arthritis"
Well, that specific vaccine.
However, to your basic point, even though the specific vaccine in question (LYMErix) was "only" about 80% effective, the federal government should make it available through some mechanism for adults today given the increasing incidence of Lyme disease. (And should add it to the vaccines covered by liability protection.)
Unfortunately, there's no "herd-immunity" externalized benefit, so the efficient way to allocate it is by individuals buying doses for themselves. (Well, for Homo economicus, rather than Homo sapiens.)
I'm fine with buying it (for a semi-reasonable price, i.e. not $10K) but no one makes an FDA-approved version and it's not clear how active the efforts are to get a LYMErix replacement approved. (There have been early-stage clinical trials but there don't seem to be aggressive efforts to move forward.) Presumably the canine versions would be safe enough but you can't just buy those on the open market and administer them.
Well, there are all the charities related to various diseases so arguably what you're asking for already exists--and is tax deductible to boot. As you suggest, some of these spend a large proportion of their budgets soliciting donations. But those numbers are publicly available. I'm not sure why/how raising funds through a kickstarter would be a fundamentally different dynamic. It still wouldn't really work for individual researchers to use crowdsourcing for a variety of reasons, including the fact that potential funders are really not in the position to judge whether a proposal makes sense or not.
I didn't say start a Kickstarter. That was used as an example of how crowd funding is used to raise a lot of money. Anyway, it was only meant to start the conversation.
You weren't suppose to tell me what was wrong with my straw man but offer a solution that's much better.
Anyway, we aren't going to change the world today so let's end this and just wait until the Elon Musk of medical research appears.
