Big pharma is interested almost entirely in maximum profit. Big pharma is not making optimal use of available scientific knowledge to pursue greater public health. Big pharma is harmful if it obstructs development of products that help people who are not affluent.
It has often been noted that big pharma is not interested in curing diseases of the poor, not interested in developing medication that can be sold at prices affordable to everyone.
There need to be pro bono institutions that employ available scientific knowledge to produce benign substitutes for harmful “feel good” euphoriants, for: (a) legal substances like alcohol, that has increasingly been shown as a health hazard, and that has destroyed so many lives; (b) for illegal substances, where clumsy law enforcement has created an enormous problem, creating black markets where sale of illegal substances are immensely profitable, and creating vast numbers of people incarcerated for selling or consuming illegal substances.
Feeling good is a very basic human need.
Why not fulfill that need by using rigorous modern scientific methods to develop substances that make us feel seriously good and at the same time improve our task performance, improve our sociablity, decrease our aggression, raise our IQ ???
Scientists with big pharma are not striving to do this. Many of them have the training to pursue this kind of objective. But instead they are striving to develop products that will sell well enough to people with enough money to pay for them, in turn benefiting shareholders.
I think progressives — both elected and non-elected -— should encourage philanthropic foundations and pro bon non-profits to pursue this objective, of creating very low cost medications that promote feeling good while at the same time improving performance, sociability and cognition. Also, nutrition experts should contribute, finding existing foods that support feeling good while enhancing performance, and along with food scientists, develop new foods that help people feel good.
At the present time, huge numbers of people are incarcerated, there are dangerous drug gangs, and there is an enormous cost to taxpayers of enforcing laws to prevent consumption of dangerous substances.
Creation of inexpensive safe substances that create good feelings while improving performance would be a giant stride in human progress.
Big pharma will not do this. Pro bono institutions with support from foundations and governments are needed.