12.5 Fair Distribution of Resources

If gene therapy has a chance to be an enabling technology, with wide spread uses, the oft-expressed concern that the economically developed world is spending it’s medical resources wastefully in developing them is misguided.

As with all technologies, costs drops the more widespread the use. Moreover, improvements in strategy and design may sharply reduce cost through improvements of product. It is not likely that gene therapies will be subject to comparable reductions in cost based upon scale of production, but there is no reason to suppose they will necessarily increase the total social costs spent on gabbling with the diseases they are used to treat.

These observations say nothing, however about whether and to what extent gene therapy applications most relevant in the developing world can be practiced there at reasonable expense, within a reasonable time.