CRISPR

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CRISPR?

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Whenever I hear someone cry about all the money wasted by our government and organizations like the NSF and NIH I like to point out the countless discoveries that have been made by basic science. The ones that bother me are the particularly hardcore libertarians who don’t realize that the market isn’t going to fund what it doesn’t see an immediate profit in. For instance, if basic scientists hadn’t been studying primitive plant immunology we would never have CRISPR. If we hadn’t discovered bacteria living in heat vents on the ocean floor we never would have found TAQ polymerase; thereby allowing large scale genetic research.
 
PainDrain said:
Whenever I hear someone cry about all the money wasted by our government and organizations like the NSF and NIH I like to point out the countless discoveries that have been made by basic science. The ones that bother me are the particularly hardcore libertarians who don’t realize that the market isn’t going to fund what it doesn’t see an immediate profit in. For instance, if basic scientists hadn’t been studying primitive plant immunology we would never have CRISPR. If we hadn’t discovered bacteria living in heat vents on the ocean floor we never would have found TAQ polymerase; thereby allowing large scale genetic research.
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I'm not sure I agree with your overall claim here. In a pure capitalist society, distant long term profits would be important too, as well as immediate short term profits. Maybe certain specific discoveries you mention may not have been discovered in such a world. We can't say for sure. It's likely that with resources allocated differently in such a society, technological advances may have been made in other areas where they haven't been in our current world.

Scientific discoveries and advances would still be valued for corporations and universities in a profit-driven world as well. Perhaps there would be less value on basic science and more value on more immediately applicable science, but I'm not sure you can claim that we're better off by pointing to the discoveries you see in this world and ignore the possible advances that would have been made if things were different.
 
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