Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The aura around medical research is one part greed, one part hope & one part charlatanism. Medicine is not a science and the people who become doctors are not scientists. Surgeons, in particular, are even less scientific than doctors. Medical researchers are often MDs but they don't have to be, probably just as many are PhDs, and a lot are both. It's unfortunate that an MD has more social cachet than a PhD, because PhDs are the ones with engineer-quality brains trained to act in a scientific manner. Luckily, almost half-a-million European PhD medical researchers are in the U.S. for the money.

American politicians often tout American medical research as the best in the world but considering the money spent on it, that claim is debatable. The best measure of quality & quantity of medical research in a head-to-head comparison could be the number of published papers, but European doctors have just slightly less with much less money spent to encourage them. Or it could be the size of their drug companies, but three of the top five are European. Or it could be the health of its citizenry, but the U.S. ranks near the bottom of the list verses Europe. Though American medical research is ultimately measured a huge success, like healthcare in general, leaving medical research in the hands of the Market has come at great expense to America's people, and it doesn't have to be. Medical research, like medicine, is a socialistic pursue not amenable to Market Forces.