Does research and development favor adult patients?

When it comes to spending on research and innovation, adult patients get way more benefits then children. That’s according to pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee of the University of California, San Francisco. “The market for most drugs and devices is significantly better, bigger and more robust in the adult world.” For health and medical corporations it’s simply a matter of profit and numbers. They can get more clients from the adult population and there are currently more adults on this planet than children. But Lee thinks this approach can be changed. “I think we just need to be staunch advocates for children. In the Bay Area with the immense amount of intellectual capacity and financial capacity, we have to energize the Bay area to invest in the health of our children going forward, because I firmly believe that the best investment that you can make is in the health of our children.” Lee says one way to achieve that is to get pediatrics grants to provide more devices and therapeutics for children.