the "inner workings" of the WCG?
While the purpose and intent of the WCG are both clever and admirable, there are questions that seem to be unanswered, or at least for which answers are not easily found, primarily surrounding what happens with the results derived from participatng in the WCG. Please feel free to correct me, but this is how I see those results being handled:
- large business enterprises and influential educational institutions provide the means for distributed processing to occur,
- participants agree to make little-used or unused resources available for that processing, while incurring the relatively minor cost of operating those resources, e.g. paying utility costs, (which I've seen compared to the cost of one typical meal at a fast-food establishment over the course of a year), then
- the results are made available to entities/establishments most capable of - or most interested in - developing treatments/medicines for the projects/diseases being researched.
It's easy to see the humanitarian aspect of the process leading to better treatments more quickly than using "traditional" research methods. While developing new treatments earlier/sooner may provide benefits for anyone suffering from a given condition/disease, it also lessons the time, and consequently the cost, of development and bringing a treatment to market.
With so many participants contributing to the WCG, and "underwriting" its' costs to some degree, do those participants share in the benefits of treatments developed based on WCG results? IOW, if a big pharma company develops a new treatment based on WCG results, are the costs of that treatment lower than they would otherwise have been?
It seems arguable that the costs have (however minimally) been underwritten by WCG participants who seem to garner no "reward" even approaching what a big pharma entity might. Are WCG contributors and participants "first in line" to undergo those new treatments? Are new treatments more readily available to them before becoming available to a non-participant?
Those questions may seem more relevant to how a "kickstarter" campaign might work, but in the long run, it's difficult to envision a large pharma company lowering what they charge for treatment they develop, even if that treatment arose from participation in the WCG. It seems unlikely that "the market" ends up determining those costs.
In simplest terms, and at least superficially, it seems as if some entities could reap huge financial rewards, while many of the "everyday people", (who might arguably be considered "shareholders" of a sort), must remain content with feeling that they've helped solve - or at least alleviate - a world-wide problem.
Please don't misunderstand the intent of my questions; they're not to denigrate the concept, intent, or practice of the WCG and it's relevant resources. I know nothing of the world of medical and scientific research, (though I'll actually admit to taking a small measure of pride in my contributions to various WCG projects). They're more to help me put this effort into a perspective I can more easily digest.