A fascinating and encouraging article and editorial in this week's New Scientist (20 January 2007)about a very promising new treatment for cancer: Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers

And the reason I put the heading I did on this thread is that New Scientist predicts the drug companies will avoid developing it, because it involves an existing drug that can't be patented, since it's been around for a long time, just not used this way:

"The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can't make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap."

New Scientist predicts in its accompanying editorial - Editorial: No patent? No cancer drug development (which you have to be a subscriber to read) that the companies are likely to put effort into trying to develop other drugs which will be patentable, and therefore more profitable - which implies that one way and another ways will be found to discourage "charities, universities and governments" from doing the necessary work to make the more cost effective drugs available.

Sometimes the assumption that the capitalist profit driven approach is the best way to do everything wears just a little thin...