Often times people will wonder why drugs seem so expensive and why a cure for cancer hasn't been found yet. Mankind, after all, has recently put a robot on Mars and also landed a man on the moon decades ago. The fact is, that drugs are very expensive and time consuming to develop and produce and a cure for cancer is being developed even as your are reading this.



The Research Process

Medical researchers employed by drug companies have found many different ways to kill cancer cells already but the trick is to kill cancer cells in humans with out killing the patient. The problems with bringing a cure from the test tube to the actual patient are innumerable and it takes years to solve all of them. The truth is, that searching for effective drugs is very expensive and time consuming, so drug companies have to be selective with regards to where they direct their research money.

Not All New Drugs Clear Testing for Approval

Drug companies have spent millions of dollars over the course of decades working on new drugs that in fact did work. In final clinical testing on humans however, it was discovered that the drugs in question presented an element of risk that was deemed unacceptable and that was the end of the drug as well as the money and manpower invested in them.

So you must bear in mind when you buy a drug at the pharmacy that you aren't just paying for the drug itself but you are also paying for its development as well as the development of newer and better drugs for future generations.

It Takes Years and Years

Even after a cure for a disease is discovered and a drug is developed to deliver the cure it takes on average over a decade of testing before the drug can be made available for the general public. This means that if aspirin was discovered today it would be ten years from now before you could buy some and use it to cure a headache.