3/31/2025 at 7:27:33 PM
A million Americans take a drug called Exenatide for diabetes.Exenatide exists because government-funded VA researchers were isolating compounds from Gila monster venom to see what they did.
They were fooling around with random reptile venom because other government researchers at the NIH were exposing test animals to Gila monster spit to see how it worked and they noticed effects on the pancreas.
The wider medical community thought it was absurd that a molecule derived from Gila monster spit could treat diabetes and it took several years of the VA scientist going to conferences and repeatedly presenting his findings before a single (relatively small, at the time) company decided to take a risk and license the discovery.
Exenatide was one of the first drugs to target the GLP-1 receptor. During trials and subsequent approval it was noted that some people lost weight while taking it.
This led to further research by pharmaceutical companies, with Lilly, being part one of the partners in an alliance to manufacture Exenatide, finally developing tirzepatide.
Mounjaro and Zepbound exist because a small team of government-funded scientists were playing around with lizard spit in the 1980s.
Certain people are completely incapable of understanding how seemingly useless research can lead to advances.
Either that, or they hate the fact that it happens and want to destroy it.
Or anything that takes more than a year or two (the above was a 40+ year process) to come to fruition is difficult to comprehend.
One of the major reasons the US is rich is that a relatively small trickle of government scientific research funding turns into a great tsunami of profit after decades and decades of profitless slow burning.
by os2warpman
4/1/2025 at 6:28:53 PM
when things are new they get work done. then they hand it to others who squander it because they never had to build it.what youre describing was 45 years ago. since that time tax funded research has become a “cushy job” where the politics matters far more than the output. the real work is done in private R&D where you actually have to get things done. no stealing money from people en mass to fund it.
by devwastaken