Throughout most of history, war has been our No.1 threat. Did we outsource our defence? No, but some city states in Renaissance Italy did - such mercenaries were called condottieri - but it didn't really solve anything and they were in an almost perpetual state of war as allegiances shifted according to who paid most. War was also interminable, as the various condottieri had agreements between themselves to prolong hostilities in a minimally lethal manner so as to maximise profit.
For the last 10 years, at least, it has been recognised, by successive strategic reviews, that the No.1 threat to us is a pandemic. Since 2020 this fact has hit us in the face, hard.
Should we therefore outsource our prime defence against this threat to a third party? That, however, is exactly what we have done by relying on Big Pharma. Isn't it about time that Big Pharma was nationalised in the national interest?
For a strictly more accurate comparison, the military is the equivalent of the NHS and the armaments industry is the equivalent of Big Pharma, and armament manufacture is indeed outsourced; however, our nuclear warheads are developed by the Atomic Weapons Establishment, in which the government has a golden share.
There is the argument that nationalisation causes inefficiency, but one would have to level the exact same argument at our armed forces. That said, removing the profit motive could feasibly result in more diseases being eliminated, and it's also a revenue earner in terms of international sales.
Leaving the development of prophylactics to the free market is no solution; if a drug company has the choice of marketing an anticoagulant that people are going to take for their entire life. or an antibacterial that may be in use for a week, but saves more lives, the choice in terms of profit is simple - the anticoagulant.
Drug development is probably one of the key targets for AI, but we've all had enough of experts, haven't we?
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