Moon Landings, the Human Genome Project, Blue Pills, and Red Pills.

The 40-year anniversary of the Apollo landing was a reminder of the potential for great human achievement. In addition to the amazing feat of sending people to the moon, many technologies grew out of the program (some cool ones here) that may not have been developed had the U.S. government not made a massive investment in this "moonshot" project.

The anniversary also generated stories about other great achievements, including the mapping of the human genome. Although scientists have mapped the genome, "the work on interpretation of genome data is still in its initial stages. It is anticipated that detailed knowledge of the human genome will provide new avenues for advances in medicine and biotechnology," (emphasis mine) according to the Wikipedia entry. In the late '90s, there was a stock market bubble in biotech stocks (around the same time as the .com bubble), based on the massive potential of the project. Human Genome Sciences (HGS) was one of the companies riding the wave, rising from below 5 to over 100, then crashing again when investors realized real, marketable treatments were years, or decades, away.

Many medical treatments work on some people, but not others. Sometimes drugs work better on certain ethnicities or other identifiable characteristics, and sometimes not. For example, I take a daily pill for allergies. I have tried many different pills for the same symptoms. Some work better than others, but doctors can't predict with certainty which one will work in advance. Drugs for mental health and many other things have a similar problem. The medical technology needed to target pills to specific patients simply does not exist yet in most cases.

Thus, private investors and the government, invested in a "moonshot" - the human genome project.

HGS's mission was to map human DNA so that someday, a doctor might be able to analyse my genes and prescribe the right allergy (or other) medicine based on that. However, almost 10 years after the biotech stock bubble, HGS is still an investment in potential and hope, although there is significant progress. According to the company website, "HGS has a well balanced and deep portfolio of novel drugs directed toward diseases that represent significant unmet medical need. Three of these products are in late-stage development." In other words, after more than a decade and billions of dollars of research, all of their products are still in development.

In Obama's news conference last night, he said "If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?" First, HMOs already try to do this, but the same pill might not be effective for all people, and the government cannot regulate this problem away. Second, very often we don't know which pill will work, contrary to Obama's rhetoric. This is one of many assumptions the President is asking us to make in order to restructure the health care system - that we have already achieved all of the goals of the human genome project. That medical science is more advanced than it really is. However, the truth is that Apollo is still on the launch pad.

Someday, we hope genetic researchers will be able to develop more reliable medicines. HGS stock tripled on Monday due to a successful trial of a potential lupus treatment, but it wasn't even noticable on the long-term stock chart. Investors, many burned when the last bubble burst, still generally see success as being far in the future. In contrast, Obama is asking us to commit billions of taxpayer money by the end of this year while the necessary medical technology could be decades away (I hope it's not, but it probably is).

Just as stock investors rushed into HGS years ago on the hope of medical miracles, Obama wants taxpayers to rush into medical "reform" on the hope of an unlikely combination of the same medical miracles, plus a slew of regulatory ones. Taxpayers should wait.