What if profits derived from patient sample development funded health care?

[Duer 157099]

I'm reading the book about the woman from whom the HeLa cell line was derived.

I have personally been involved in starting cell lines from patient-derived tissues, so I have some degree of experience from one perspective.

OTOH, I'm also a patient and it would be naive for me to think that my own samples have not found their way into a research lab or freezer at one time or another.

I realize that there are enormous financial rewards that sometimes accompany the research, and the patents, and the controversy and the lawsuits.

I don't know what the best solution is, but I do understand the value to the scientific community of the research tools derived from patient samples.

So I'm thinking:

What about some sort of system where the financial rewards that are derived from such samples are put into a pool that is used to fund universal health care? I think, for example, that the family of Henrietta Lacks (HeLa mom) would have been more understanding about the legacy of their mother's tissue samples if they had been receiving free and comprehensive health care that was partly (or wholly, as the case may be) funded by profits that instead have gone largely to the pharmaceutical companies (who, granted, spent large sums of money to conduct the research in the first place).

Or even a compromise so that there is still some financial incentive to do the research, but the rewards are partially used for the health care fund.

Think about how "socialist" the concept of research is: tissue samples are obtained from the population at large in order to benefit the population at large in the form of disease diagnosis and treatment. I mean, you don't really get any more socialistic than that at a very basic level, and yet I bet the rightwingnuts approve of it. But yet, the corporations reap the rewards once again. Socialized risk, capitalized reward. Why not break into this arena and socialize the reward?

Let's discuss. Plus, would like to discuss the whole matter of patient-derived tissue and what is done with it.