Dagenais D L, Courville L, Dagenais M G
Soc Sci Med. 1985;20(6):601-7. doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(85)90399-5.
Certain serious diseases, including several major genetic disorders, cannot be treated effectively unless they are detected before symptoms appear. In such cases, only systematic population screening can ensure that the necessary preventive treatment can be administered to affected individuals. The question of whether to establish such screening programs, which may be relatively costly, is a pressing problem for many public administrations. This study of the costs and benefits of the Quebec Network of Genetic Medicine has as its main objective the development of an analytical framework which can be generally applied to such problems. In this article, we attempt to evaluate the profitability of the Network to society. For the evaluation of the less tangible costs and benefits, we adopted the minimum profitability principle, which essentially involves establishing a lower bound on the value of the profitability of the Network. The net benefits assessed by this study, although certainly underestimated, are still very significant. Since the Network is administered by a team of researchers, the study also throws some light on the links existing between research and development activities on the one hand and public services on the other, and hence on the general question of the socioeconomic profitability of biomedical research.
某些严重疾病，包括几种主要的遗传疾病，除非在症状出现之前就被检测出来，否则无法得到有效治疗。在这种情况下，只有系统的人群筛查才能确保对受影响的个体进行必要的预防性治疗。对于许多公共管理部门来说，是否建立这种可能成本较高的筛查项目是一个紧迫的问题。这项对魁北克遗传医学网络的成本和效益的研究，其主要目标是开发一个可普遍应用于此类问题的分析框架。在本文中，我们试图评估该网络对社会的盈利能力。对于评估那些较难衡量的成本和效益，我们采用了最低盈利能力原则，该原则主要涉及为网络盈利能力的价值设定一个下限。本研究评估的净效益虽然肯定被低估了，但仍然非常可观。由于该网络由一组研究人员管理，该研究还揭示了一方面研发活动与另一方面公共服务之间存在的联系，从而也揭示了生物医学研究的社会经济盈利能力这一总体问题。
