The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
NC - AT: Cap Good - Biotech
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2NC - AT: Cap Good - BiotechCapitalism ruins biotechOakland, 19, Anthony Oakland, Writes for the socialist press, 7/23/2019, “Why Capitalism is Stunting Science”, https://www.socialist.net/why-capitalism-is-stunting-science.html - FT Elsewhere, Cuba today has a trailblazing biotechnology sector. This is thanks to massive state investment, guided by needs rather than profits, and a planned economy where companies do not compete and where oversight is centralised. As a result, Cuba has been able to pioneer vaccines against meningitis. Even capitalist governments recognise, in extreme circumstances, the superiority of such a model. This is illustrated by the SEMATECH consortium, established by the US government to foster a viable domestic semiconductor industry that could compete with that in Japan. Rather than race each other, its members shared their knowledge. This allowed them to “avoid duplicating research efforts” - thus reducing research expenditure while increasing its efficiency. However, given that capitalism is inimical to such collaboration, the US government needed to entice corporations to participate with an annual $100 million sweetener. Since 2011, the Cuban population has been able to receive a vaccine against lung cancer free of charge. This is because Cuba also has a remarkable healthcare system: from primary care to high-tech vaccines - everything is completely freely available to the population. The result is that Cubans have a life expectancy equal to that seen in the United States – an advanced capitalist country that spends fifteen times as much on healthcare per capita than that in Cuba. In fact, the US government spends as much money administering the mess of a private healthcare system (per person) as Cuba spends on all healthcare-related costs. Without the profit motive or intellectual property as obstacles, Cuba was the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, which the WHO lauded as “one of the greatest public health achievements possible”. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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