Economía y biotecnología

Abstract

The challenge put forward in this article by the author lies in analyzing biomedical research from the point of view of economic science. This article adopts the socioeconomic approach in trying to answer two basic questions: where does the money for research come from and how is the spending of this money justified within the framework of health betterment in general, and of the sanitary challenges that the modern world is posing? 

The ambition of this text is pedagogical. It attempts to illustrate in a simple way, with a view to succeed in attaining a global comprehension of bioethical issues, the economic justification of investments made in a given [type of] biomedical research. It starts from the grounds that this justification, as in any segregation of funds, is to great extent driven by (either private or public) political opportunity criteria. Notwithstanding, it also acknowledges that political opportunity has to be explained as such in the internal decision-making process, and this is the explanation we are concerned with in order to understand, while remaining outside the process, why some decisions, not others, are made.

For this purpose, the subject will be divided and dealt with in two separate parts: the construction of capital funds for pharmacological research (i.e., where the money comes from)*, and the shaping of the sanitary goals and priorities in the world’s geopolitics strategy on health (why it is destined to certain purposes).