Given that drugs take around 10 years to get to market, and that some time is needed for industrial adoption as well, it's not very reasonable to expect clinically approved drugs before a few years.
This is really sad. A new recipe for feeding honeybees to make tastier honey could get to market in perhaps a month or two. All the chemical reactions happening in the bees gut and all the chemicals in the resulting honey are unknown, yet within a matter of weeks its being eaten.
Yet if we find a new way of combining chemicals to cure cancer, it takes a decade before most can benefit.
I feel like we don't balance our risks vs rewards well.
I think the idea is that we're, as a species, much more comfortable with the idea that 15 years down the line that 50% of treated colonies collapse in a way directly attributable to the treatment than we are with the idea that 15 years down the line 50% of treated humans die in a way directly attributable to the treatment.
Now if the human alternative to treatment is to die anyway than i think that balance shifts. I do think we should be somewhat liberal with experimental treatments for patients in dire need, but you have to also understand that experimental treatments can just be really expensive which limits either the people who can afford it, or if it's given for free, the amount the researcher can make/perform/provide.
10 years is a very long time. I've had close family members die of cancer and any opportunity for treatment (read: hope) is good in my opinion. But i wouldn't say there's no reason that it takes so long
