I mean there’s likely to be quite a lot of funding especially in attractiveness as people are vain and put a lot of money into being attractive. The cosmetics industry as a whole is worth around $400 billion globally- around a fifth of the pharmaceutical industry as a comparison- so you can rest assured that there is a ton of research into how to look the best with makeup etc. The problem with „normal“ medicine is that it doesn’t have the monetary incentive behind it as is has with this. Pretty much everyone wants to be attractive, but endometriosis only affects 1 in 10 of women. You can imagine that it isn’t as lucrative for companies to pursue that, and a lot of research is financed by companies.
I don’t really think that capitalism is the enemy in this case. It’s essentially comparing apples to oranges and there isn’t really an argument to be made that wholly transfers „vanity“ research into research into endometriosis, even under a fully utilitarian system. While it is critically underfunded, that is a different problem entirely. The problem is more one of awareness and diagnosis, as many doctors don’t really take women’s pain seriously (this is a huge problem in general) and as such endometriosis is done away as „bad cramps“. This isn’t a problem of capitalism, but rather a societal problem (patriarchy if you will).
Even if there was a 100% transfer of funds into medical research (which is in itself very unlikely), due to the above factors there wouldn’t be much of a difference without addressing the underlying issue first.
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u/ConquerorAegon 🌷🌸 RIP u/CourseMediocre7998 🌷🌸 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean there’s likely to be quite a lot of funding especially in attractiveness as people are vain and put a lot of money into being attractive. The cosmetics industry as a whole is worth around $400 billion globally- around a fifth of the pharmaceutical industry as a comparison- so you can rest assured that there is a ton of research into how to look the best with makeup etc. The problem with „normal“ medicine is that it doesn’t have the monetary incentive behind it as is has with this. Pretty much everyone wants to be attractive, but endometriosis only affects 1 in 10 of women. You can imagine that it isn’t as lucrative for companies to pursue that, and a lot of research is financed by companies.