Enormous improvements in human health have taken place over the last half-century. Americans live, on average, a decade longer. The most prevalent cause of mortality in the United Statesâ??—â??cardiovascular disease, which causes heart attacks and strokesâ??—â??has decreased by over 50%. Cancer, the number-two cause, has become far more treatable, and cancer mortality rates have plummeted in recent years. A few decades ago, it was common to see individuals whom arthritis had deformed and condemned to immobility and chronic pain. Now, such victims are uncommon. Mental-hospital wards that used to house patients with intractable psychoses and depression either sit empty or have been repurposed. The outbreak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s elicited apocalyptic predictions that it would bankrupt the health-care system. But within two decades, many HIV-infected individuals were living normal, albeit medicated lives.
The driving force behind these remarkable improvements is unquestionably medical innovation: new technologies including medications, medical devices, and improved medical procedures. But most people are unaware of who or what deserves our gratitude for these advances.
In a 2015 commentary in the New York Times about medical innovation, Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote, "As it is, most of the important innovations come out of our universities and research centers, like the National Institutes of Health, funded by government and foundations." If asked, most people would agree: The credit for medical innovation belongs to research performed at universities and in non-profit research institutes. And, for more than half a century, the American government has provided most of the funding for such research, creating what might usefully be termed a "government-academic biomedical complex."
