Penicillin was discovered by complete accident, actually.
Also, the jury is still rather out on the long-term impact of medications...it sure made a bunch of rich folks richer, though!
EDIT:
Also, most of those solutions came through private industry working on .gov contracts. A better example you might want to use is the innovations out of Bell Labs, all done basically to further solidify the telephone monopoly. That in turn could be argued to be a monopoly granted by a state to solve the communications problem, but still.
> Also, the jury is still rather out on the long-term impact of medications.
I can't speak to your experience, but I would have died as an infant without modern medications and modern medical procedures. I speak to you today as a healthy, relatively happy, productive member of society.
Moreover, I think we can point to the innumerable treated cases of snakebite, lockjaw, rabies, polio, cancer, syphilis, etc. as strong evidence for the positive long-term impact of medication and medical care.
Fleming discovered Penicillin accidentally, but he was a bacteriologist, and he was doing research into antiseptics. It was a discovery that was entirely related to his work.
And he was researching antiseptics because he had served in the Royal Army and had watched numerous colleagues die from infections following their wounds.
Also, the jury is still rather out on the long-term impact of medications...it sure made a bunch of rich folks richer, though!
EDIT:
Also, most of those solutions came through private industry working on .gov contracts. A better example you might want to use is the innovations out of Bell Labs, all done basically to further solidify the telephone monopoly. That in turn could be argued to be a monopoly granted by a state to solve the communications problem, but still.