Right, and all of this process exists for a reason. Science is hard, and life sciences are especially so. You want there to be scientific basis behind something that is offered as a remedy. As opposed to say, homeopathy, which is utter bullshit.
Unfortunately this does mean that non-patentable remedies fall through the cracks. I mean, we have lots of off-patent remedies like aspirin and so on, but there isn’t a viable path forward for new, non-patentable medications. That’s just the economic reality. If it turned out that rubbing Vitamin C on your big toe did in fact cure melanoma, it would be nice if NIH or some other public health entity could fund the clinical trials for the benefit of mankind. I would like to think that ‘benefit to mankind’ falls within NIH’s charter. It would be a nice second path to clinical trials for promising nonpatentable medicine that could run in parallel with the existing clinical trial path for patented medicines.
