Ok. You do realize that each stage of the drug development process is very expensive right? You'll need money for lab mice, clinical trials etc.
How do you suggest intellectual curiosity be fulfilled with no money?
Drug development is fundamentally different from software. There is just no way to do it (either by public or private institutions) without a lot of money.
You have no idea how much it costs to keep a mouse colony fed, taken care of, given veterinary care, etc... and then there's the breeding and genotyping, and treatments. And if they die, you need a pathology report. Mice get expensive fast. These are usually very well engineered mice strains that cost a lot of money just to develop in and of themselves.
And that doesn't even cover their plans for world domination.
I think you can house up to 5 mice in a cage, and it wouldn't be uncommon for a reasonably sized lab to have a colony of around 200-300 mice. So you'd have maybe 75-100 cages (males you house at a lower rate). So your daily rate at OSU is on the order of $75-100. At other institutions, it can cost as much as $1 per mouse. And this is just for housing them. You start getting to real money, real fast.
How do you suggest intellectual curiosity be fulfilled with no money?
Drug development is fundamentally different from software. There is just no way to do it (either by public or private institutions) without a lot of money.