Researchers & pharma companies, especially in the US, produce very little in terms of achieving results, especially as it relates to cancer research & epidemiology.

This is, in large part, due to animal trials & the FDA.

It may surprise you to learn that mice...

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...aren't people. Shocking, but true.

However, the FDA requires drugs, treatments, et all be tested on them for efficacy before any human trials are conducted.

Additionally, a lot of the grants & funding from donor-supported institutes also want to see animal trials first...

This is the part where everyone says, "Sure, but we've been testing on mice for years. Genetically, they aren't that far off from humans."

Okay. But on a nuclear level, they're vastly different. Cancer is easy enough to reproduce in mice, but it isn't something they...

...organically develop. It is still human cancer bred, implanted, shot into them, etc.

So we've gotten better at curing human cancer in mice. But not much better at curing it in humans.

Cancer is a beast, and cancers react differently in different humans, they also...

...react differently from mouse to mouse. But curing it in mice isn't anything like curing it in a human.

Mice, for instance, have a metabolic rate which is seven times that of humans. So the differences between what is metabolized & how quickly can be huge.

Further...

Humans generally have more neutrophils than lymphocytes, because our height means that we are more susceptible to air-borne illnesses & bacteria rather than earth-born illnesses & bacteria.

Mice are just the opposite, for obvious reasons.

A study conducted by researchers (source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17175568/ ) concluded that: Discordance between animal and human studies may be due to bias or to the failure of animal models to mimic clinical disease adequately.

Animal studies are often methodologically unsound, as well, and has been evidenced most in Stroke studies.

Often, researchers apply the weakest studies, methodologically speaking, to show positive results - and more stringent criteria to show little to no protective effect...

...when that suits their bias. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746847/

To summarize, government over-regulation & intervention via the FDA has created an ecosystem where pharma companies game animal trials in order to issue new drugs & treatments that have NO PRACTICAL BENEFIT to patient outcomes, and charge highly for them.

Additionally...

...this rigged system has institutes & charities wasting donor funding on trials that will generally fail to benefit patients & very often create horrible symptoms in exchange for very little change in outcomes.

This is a big reason why we watch cancer patients suffer...

...through godawful side-effects of their treatments, and still end up dying. One such drug, Tarceva, "prolongs survival of those with pancreatic cancer by an average of 12 days at a cost of $26,000 a year, not to mention dreadful side effects."

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/well/live/cancer-treatment-at-the-end-of-life.html

The TL;DR to this is the same as most others: government intervention in a market not only skews the economic landscape, but very often has unintended consequences for millions of people.

We've all lost someone to cancer, stroke, and other diseases that could have EFFECTIVE meds

They do not. We have the FDA & animal trials to blame, in large part, for that.