Reuters: Market failure can be sign of fatigue

Firestormm

Firestormm

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This I think is a great article:

Market failure can be sign of fatigue

11 June 2014

By Edward Hadas

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Modern economies work to meet consumers’ needs. So if needs are not met, that must be an economic failure, right? Healthcare suggests otherwise. Sometimes, unhelpful ideologies get in the way of economics delivering the goods.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) – also known as myalgic encephalopathy (ME) – is a case in point. The economic benefit of treating this difficult condition should be material for patients, drugmakers and society. Yet the treatment is poor.

CFS is still a mystery. It is identified mostly by its long list of symptoms, starting with persistent exhaustion. What seems to be happening is an interconnected network of malfunctions in the nervous, circulatory and digestive systems. Estimates of the number of sufferers vary greatly. Something like 0.1 percent of the population is plausible.

Medical ignorance reflects a lack of research, and the lack of research reflects a lack of professional respect. Despite the devastating effects on those who have it – many sufferers spend years bedridden – most doctors and funding agencies did not take the disease seriously until recently.

Even now, research funding is scarce and many doctors tell sufferers that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them. Their symptoms are dismissed as physical manifestations of psychological difficulties. The psychological reductionism is not only medically irresponsible. It also doesn’t make sense in the modern economy.

CFS is the sort of complicated condition that our high-tech, high-expense healthcare is supposed to address well, or at least make a serious effort to do so. More crassly, this is a reasonably common disease that attacks many people in the prime of life. That makes it expensive in terms of lost activity and the cost of caring. And it looks like a disease which can only be dealt with by long courses of expensive drugs – just what pharmaceutical companies crave.

Why isn’t the healthcare industry – the delivery system, the research complex and the profit-seekers – more interested?

One theory is that the disease is not quite awful enough to catch the public’s attention. It rarely kills directly and it comes with few symptoms that show up well in pictures. A related suggestion is that the right celebrity endorsement has not yet come along. Many patients and their advocates see a malign conspiracy, aiming to empower psychiatrists or reduce disability payments.

There is something in all these explanations. However, the most important reason that this physical condition was left so long to the psychological crowd is intellectual: it does not fit with the traditional model of infectious disease....

Read more: http://blogs.reuters.com/edward-hadas/2014/06/11/market-failure-can-be-sign-of-fatigue/
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A.B.

A.B.

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CFS is viewed as psychosomatic because the insurance industry has found willing mercenaries in people like Wessely and Fink to promote this view. It's not the only factor, but I think it's a big one.

Climate change denial, and tobacco science are other examples of industry interests being able to delay scientific progress.
 
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newly_optimistic

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Could it be the case that while from a long-term, absolute "bottom line" basis, the economic argument likely favors more research into cause & diagnostics, and more development oriented toward treatment & cure......on a relative, short-term risk/reward basis, the economic argument just as likely supports a strong focus on low-dollar risk / high revenue "research" & "treatment" programs oriented toward the psychosomatic realm?

If true, then to some degree the market forces underlying the economic argument are, at this point, operating exactly as they would be expected to.....possibly even exactly as they "should". What we need is for a small number (one!?) of privately funded initiatives (or government mandated -- though less likely, and not in line with "market forces" arguments....either research or treatment focused.....that produce successful enough outcomes (measured by science, or even just by greater mainstream awareness and acceptance) to shift the risk/reward assessment by the "big guys" (pharmaceutical & academic) from fear of the expenditure of resources (money, time, credibility) associated with jumping in to early, to fear of the lost revenue & prestige associated with missing out on discovery of causes, treatments, and cure(s).

Do you think maybe....aside from the short-lived and misguided XMRV related flare up....we are closer now than at anytime in the past 30 years to finally achieving this shift?
 
Simon

Simon

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Wow, where do you find this stuff, @Firestormm?

I believe this is a very important article, and we should encourage the author. I really hope people will 'like' the piece, as well as share on twitter, facebook etc:
Market failure can be sign of fatigue | Edward Hadas

@newly_optimistic I think you have a point about the short-term perspective, it depends on what timescale organisations operate on:
Treatments or vaccines for CFS are likely to turn out to cost less than the value of the labour that is currently lost to the disease
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I don't know what the current cost of CFS is in the US is at the moment, but in the UK it's around £1 billion a year. That would buy a lot of research.
 
NK17

NK17

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newly_optimistic said:
Could it be the case that while from a long-term, absolute "bottom line" basis, the economic argument likely favors more research into cause & diagnostics, and more development oriented toward treatment & cure......on a relative, short-term risk/reward basis, the economic argument just as likely supports a strong focus on low-dollar risk / high revenue "research" & "treatment" programs oriented toward the psychosomatic realm?

If true, then to some degree the market forces underlying the economic argument are, at this point, operating exactly as they would be expected to.....possibly even exactly as they "should". What we need is for a small number (one!?) of privately funded initiatives (or government mandated -- though less likely, and not in line with "market forces" arguments....either research or treatment focused.....that produce successful enough outcomes (measured by science, or even just by greater mainstream awareness and acceptance) to shift the risk/reward assessment by the "big guys" (pharmaceutical & academic) from fear of the expenditure of resources (money, time, credibility) associated with jumping in to early, to fear of the lost revenue & prestige associated with missing out on discovery of causes, treatments, and cure(s).

Do you think maybe....aside from the short-lived and misguided XMRV related flare up....we are closer now than at anytime in the past 30 years to finally achieving this shift?
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I really HOPE so @newly_optimistic !!!
 
NK17

NK17

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I've tried to post a comment under Edward Hadas's article, but was not able to do it yet.

I think it's important to let him know that we appreciate his point of view.

Also we should share on social media.

IMO it's a well written and balanced piece of journalism.

Thanks @Firestormm for finding it and sharing!
 
G

Gypsy

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Great article. I think more people haven't read it because of the title. It sounds political or like it has something to do with the stock market. I thought it was about the stock market at first glance :) Maybe changing the title of the post or reposting with a new title would help get more views?
 
B

Bob

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Gypsy said:
Great article. I think more people haven't read it because of the title. It sounds political or like it has something to do with the stock market. I thought it was about the stock market at first glance :) Maybe changing the title of the post or reposting with a new title would help get more views?
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Yep, the title put me off reading it, until it was repeatedly highly recommended on Twitter.
 
WillowJ

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Bob said:
Yep, the title put me off reading it, until it was repeatedly highly recommended on Twitter.
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I read it, but i expected to find one of those insensitive "x problem is fatiguing [as in, fed up with that] like CFS" analogies.

Was very pleasantly surprised.
 
Simon

Simon

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NK17 said:
I've tried to post a comment under Edward Hadas's article, but was not able to do it yet.

I think it's important to let him know that we appreciate his point of view.

Also we should share on social media.

IMO it's a well written and balanced piece of journalism.

Thanks @Firestormm for finding it and sharing!
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Shame we can't leave comments but facebook likes are going up nicely (429 latest)

If you want to email the author with your comments, you can find his email address via 'contact' at the bottom of his personal website homepage: Edward Hadas
 
N

N.A.Wright

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Modern economies work to meet consumers’ needs. So if needs are not met, that must be an economic failure, right ?
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It's unfortunate that the author starts from a fallacy. Modern (as distinct from what ?) economies operate by meeting the 'wants' of those who can afford to have them met. The developed world moved away from needs based economics at least a century ago and the whole thrust of politics since then has consistently downgraded need provision in favour of unrestrained non needs based consumption.

I'm afraid this intitial fallacy is compounded by a second, that is the identification of the Health Care Industry as a supplier of novel solutions across all areas of potential need. If there truly is such a thing as a unified Health Care Industry, then it certainly is not going to be focussed on novel solutions, any more than any other industry is. Industry, driven by profit is always going to seek maximisation of available current resources and will only change direction when forced by a prospective loss of customers, forseeable new gain or by political demand. It's why 95% of medical research is state or charity funded - most of it will never make money.
 
Firestormm

Firestormm

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Interesting Biography of the author: Edward Hadas

BIOGRAPHY

Edward Hadas is Economics Editor at Reuters Breakingviews, and columnist at Reuters.com. Previously he was Assistant Editor of the Lex column of comment and analysis at the Financial Times, and Assistant Editor at Breakingviews. Edward received the Business Journalist of the Year Award for economics, 2009. He also teaches political and social philosophy at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, UK.

Before becoming a journalist in 2004, he worked for 25 years as a financial analyst for various firms, including Morgan Stanley and Putnam Investments. He has degrees in philosophy, classics and mathematics from Oxford University and Columbia University and an MBA from SUNY Binghamton.



Edward Hadas was born in 1956 in New York, grew up in St. Louis, and has worked in Buffalo, Boston, Paris and, since 1992, in London. He has three adult children and a poetic wife.
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His website: https://sites.google.com/site/edwardhadas/
Might be a little out of date...
 
Firestormm

Firestormm

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Health Rising Blog:

June 12, 2014

Market Failure! Reuters Journalist Asks Why Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Is Ignored

“Sometimes, unhelpful ideologies get in the way” Edward Hadas, an economic journalist, recently took on the question of why Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is funded so poorly in a Reuters piece “Market Failure Can Be A Sign of Fatigue” . He notes that while Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a mystery to the medical establishment the bigger mystery is why a relatively common disease causing high rates of disability and economic losses to society gets almost no funding...

Read more: Market Failure! Reuters Journalist Asks Why Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Is Ignored http://www.cortjohnson.org/blog/201...alist-takes-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-ignored/
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