6 ms·

My wife had a great job at a family controlled, small drug company named King Pharmaceuticals. They were based in Bristol, TN, and had fewer than 1000 employee

by eitally 11y ago

My wife had a great job at a family controlled, small drug company named King Pharmaceuticals. They were based in Bristol, TN, and had fewer than 1000 employees. King developed, owned the patents on, and sold the epipen. Of course, what happened next is exactly what you'd expect. Pfizer made a bid for a hostile takeover and the shareholders approved it. What was the first order of business on day 0? Exactly what you'd expect: lay off 90% of the King employees and more than double the price of epipens. Why? Because they could. I have deep appreciation for pharmaceutical research, but it's folly to imagine any of it's ultimately driven by anything but profits. The exception may be the fewer-every-year small pharmas. Btw, after Pfizer laid her off, my wife went to work for Salix, another small-but-successful pharma based in Raleigh that specializes in GI drugs. Guess what happened after barely over a year? Valeant bought Salix and laid off 90% of the workforce. Valeant is far worse than Pfizer, too. Their entire business proposition is finding "under-performing" drugs, buying the companies, then cutting costs and doing a better job marketing them. It's working so far, but has cost a lot of good folks their jobs/careers.

subway 11y ago
I have deep appreciation for pharmaceutical research, but it's folly to imagine any of it's ultimately driven by anything but profits. I disagree with you. I remain convinced that research is driven by the curious geeks with a passion for solving the problem at hand. Research is, unfortunately, funded by profiteering assholes.
- HarryHirsch 11y ago
  The market does not allow people like Roy Vagelos, Sigurd Varian or Bill Packard to thrive today, all we get instead is locusts like Valeant and Shkreli. That's the reality. The incentives are completely messed up, and there is no path to improvement.
- theophrastus 11y ago
  I worked for big pharma and medium (sized) pharma, i discovered several new chemotypes to treat pathologies, all eventually patented. i never got a dime, because that was the terms of my employment. i watched the market price rise on many of the pharmaceuticals i had worked on each time they were sold, placed under new contracts, and re-sold. Our salaries didn't rise as a result, our equipment wasn't modernized. Where did that extra profit go? "It's all fungible", one suit told me at a company meeting; but you're correct, our normally fixed salaries did filter down through the growing salaries of "profiteering assholes".
  - darkmighty 11y ago
    What could be done to encourage pharmaceutical research/progress? Would something like demanding (say) at least 20% of the profits should go into research be viable?
    - astazangasta 11y ago
      How about funding this stuff publicly, where there is an actual democratic peer-review process? The only reason people end up working for pharma is because they can't get a grant. Just up the NIH & NSF budgets, and scientists will be free to work without profiteering assholes to worry about. It's not that fucking complicated.
      - darkmighty 11y ago
        Well I would say it's complicated: we're talking about an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars, an army of researchers and a network of institutions with discoveries made all around. Also, simply increasing government budget frees scientists to do work (great!) but does nothing about the "profiteering assholes" that already exist, they can still play around with drug prices for profit simply because people are hostage to their drugs. Offloading all work to government may have perils too; markets are usually more quick at adapting with price signaling, and overall efficiency is usually higher in those organizations (less bureaucracy, more agility).
        astazangasta 11y ago
        Drugs do not operate in a market. It is definitely not true with patented drugs (which operate under a government monopoly), and as we're seeing now that monopolies are taking over generics that's becoming less true there as well. In addition, it's simply false that businesses are more efficient than the government. For example, compare overhead in public health care systems (e.g. Medicare) to private insurance systems and you'll find that the overhead is vastly lower in the public systems - something like 3% vs. 15%. Giant businesses are as burdened by bureaucracy as any other large institution, and they're only as efficient as they need to be, which in an industry with monopoly rents is not very efficient (pharma spends as much on research as the government for much less in research outcomes). Government at least has Republicans keeping it trim.

by eitally 11y ago

subway 11y ago

I have deep appreciation for pharmaceutical research, but it's folly to imagine any of it's ultimately driven by anything but profits. I disagree with you. I remain convinced that research is driven by the curious geeks with a passion for solving the problem at hand. Research is, unfortunately, funded by profiteering assholes.

HarryHirsch 11y ago
The market does not allow people like Roy Vagelos, Sigurd Varian or Bill Packard to thrive today, all we get instead is locusts like Valeant and Shkreli. That's the reality. The incentives are completely messed up, and there is no path to improvement.
theophrastus 11y ago
I worked for big pharma and medium (sized) pharma, i discovered several new chemotypes to treat pathologies, all eventually patented. i never got a dime, because that was the terms of my employment. i watched the market price rise on many of the pharmaceuticals i had worked on each time they were sold, placed under new contracts, and re-sold. Our salaries didn't rise as a result, our equipment wasn't modernized. Where did that extra profit go? "It's all fungible", one suit told me at a company meeting; but you're correct, our normally fixed salaries did filter down through the growing salaries of "profiteering assholes".
- darkmighty 11y ago
  What could be done to encourage pharmaceutical research/progress? Would something like demanding (say) at least 20% of the profits should go into research be viable?
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    How about funding this stuff publicly, where there is an actual democratic peer-review process? The only reason people end up working for pharma is because they can't get a grant. Just up the NIH & NSF budgets, and scientists will be free to work without profiteering assholes to worry about. It's not that fucking complicated.
    - darkmighty 11y ago
      Well I would say it's complicated: we're talking about an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars, an army of researchers and a network of institutions with discoveries made all around. Also, simply increasing government budget frees scientists to do work (great!) but does nothing about the "profiteering assholes" that already exist, they can still play around with drug prices for profit simply because people are hostage to their drugs. Offloading all work to government may have perils too; markets are usually more quick at adapting with price signaling, and overall efficiency is usually higher in those organizations (less bureaucracy, more agility).
      - astazangasta 11y ago
        Drugs do not operate in a market. It is definitely not true with patented drugs (which operate under a government monopoly), and as we're seeing now that monopolies are taking over generics that's becoming less true there as well. In addition, it's simply false that businesses are more efficient than the government. For example, compare overhead in public health care systems (e.g. Medicare) to private insurance systems and you'll find that the overhead is vastly lower in the public systems - something like 3% vs. 15%. Giant businesses are as burdened by bureaucracy as any other large institution, and they're only as efficient as they need to be, which in an industry with monopoly rents is not very efficient (pharma spends as much on research as the government for much less in research outcomes). Government at least has Republicans keeping it trim.