The Risks Associated With Sleep Are Potentially Being Innovated Away

Forbes

4 days ago

Austrian School eminence Ludwig von Mises once observed that any action outside the stationary state is a speculation on what's ahead. Looked at through the prism of sleep, it's not only good for us, it's also safe. While asleep we can't exit the very stationary state that could lead to monstrous error.
Just the same, readers are increasingly aware that even sleep comes with risks. Think sleep apnea. The throat muscles of some narrow during sleep. The latter can cause people to snore all the while boosting the risk of higher blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart attack, and stroke. Even the good things can be risky, or so it seems.
All of which speaks to the beauty of the profit motive. Problems generally rate solutions crafted by the profit-motivated, and it seems sleep apnea is the latest problem that is being met with a solution.
This is important in the here and now in consideration of what's available to mitigate the health and irritability effects of fitful sleep born of sleep apnea. For now, snorers can put on a face mask at bedtime, and that is connected to a continuous positive pressure (CPAP) machine. The machine keeps the constricted airway open via air that's forced through the opening. It's known to work, but there's a discomfort quality to the machine that causes some to abandon the whole project of mitigating sleep apnea's challenges.
The good news is that Cambridge, MA-based Apnimed has come up with a pre-bedtime pill that can do for sleep apnea sufferers what formerly could only be done by a mask. It's progress, which is the point. Particularly right now.
Politicians, including President Trump, can't get beyond the crucial truth that market prices aren't to be lamented, rather they're to be treasured. Prices are what organized market economies, and they're in particular a crucial signal telling producers where their intrepid ways will be rewarded. The CPAP machines are quite simply not enough for sleep apnea sufferers, which explains the work being done by Apnimed to replace sleeping machines with an oral drug.
For now, Apnimed's drug is in clinical trials. The New York Times has interviewed sleep doctors who believe the drug could 'transform the lives of many,' and crucially not just those who dislike the CPAP machines. Others take weight-loss drugs to fix the sleep apnea problem, not to mention the myriad other oral devices snorers purchase in hopes of snoring less while sleeping. Which is a comment that Apnimed's drug won't just potentially transform sleep health, it could also enhance life quality in the bargain.
Side effects? Invariably there are some, and the Times lists dry mouth and insomnia as two. Which is yet another reason for politicians to cease trying to corrupt the brilliance of freely arrived at price signals. Figure that if Apnimed succeeds, and logically prospers by virtue of transforming sleep, health and life quality, its success will exist as a lure for others to enter the space.
From this, it's no insight to suggest that increased investment will gradually not just be meant to improve on the existing drug, but erase some of the downsides of it. Investment is about improvement, and its profits that are a magnet for it.
Which demands yet again that politicians stay out, and cease talk of 'most favored nations' drug prices, 'bending the cost curve' downward, or any other actions meant to obscure true prices. Market forces are routinely working to improve our health and wellbeing, so let's allow markets to work.