CANCER AND THE STOCK MARKET

 

KING AND QUEEN OF THE BEAUMONT HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR PROM

66 years later

 

  Do you hate cancer?  Do you have piles of money sitting around, waiting to be invested?  Well, if you are like me your answers will be” of course” and “get serious”.  However, if you can answer “yes” to both questions, it behooves you to read this article, from a recent Economist magazine:

https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21736176-progress-developing-treatments-makes-oncology-research-favourite

The way things seem to work nowadays is that tiny firms are created to investigate and possibly exploit new research breakthroughs.  These little fish are then swallowed tail and chin whiskers by much larger fish – collectively known as Big Pharma.  These large fish have the resources to do the requisite clinical trials, and wrestle with the FDA over the results.  And, the article implies, the FDA is uncommonly quick to render a verdict on a cancer drug because, “people are dying, and they are dying now.”

All this takes money.  Ideally the Feds would allocate enough to support a healthy research program, but they don’t.  And, there aren’t enough Jeff Bezos’s and Bill Gates’s to go around.  To some extent, it’s up to us. We can give our money directly to research organizations, as I do with Linda’s fund at Fred Hutch, or we can invest it in little-fish firms doing development work.  Then, when (and if) our little fish gets engulfed by the likes of Pfizer or Merck we can invest our profits in another little fish.  Or, if your anti-capitalist soul rebels at profit, send the filthy stuff to me.  I’ll put it to good work!