R&D
The cost of developing drugs for rare and common diseases are about the same, but the revenues aren’t. Pharmaceutical companies concentrate on drugs with larger markets because larger markets mean more profits.
As a result, patients diagnosed with rare diseases — those ranked at the bottom quarter in terms of how frequently they are diagnosed — are 45% more likely to die before age 55 than are patients diagnosed with more common diseases.
If China and India were as wealthy as the U.S., the market for cancer drugs would be 8 times larger than it is today.
Cancer is now China’s leading killer, with spending on treatment increasing by 17% per year. AstraZeneca and Novartis are building major research facilities in China, which will benefit patients everywhere.
There are only about 6M scientists and engineers in the entire world, nearly a quarter of whom are in the U.S. If the world as a whole were as wealthy as the U.S. and were devoting the same share of population to research and development, there would be more than 5 times as many scientists and engineers worldwide.
Even small changes in economic growth rates produce large benefits. At current income levels, with an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 3% per year, America’s real per capita gross domestic product would exceed $1 million per year in just over 100 years, more than 22 times higher than it is today.