5 ms·

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 r

by 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.
        darkmighty 11y ago
        They do not operate in a market, but there are market-driven pressures for developing new drugs: efficient companies assign research priority according to their expected returns from drug development. In any case, reform is definitively needed; and complaining without demanding reform is pointless. Discovering new drugs is a scientific endeavor and so it really should be as open as possible. I am a little skeptical of plain massive government research agencies, but maybe it's a good way to go. Maybe patent reform or something else is instead better. If you look at machine learning research the industry is not bad at sharing results because of two factors, apparently: 1) Companies know that progress will be much faster if everyone decides to share 2) To attract to researchers, they need to show they do high caliber research and share.
  - theophrastus 11y ago
    "demanding"? this is an industry which fires us if we ask for a raise, or hint at collective bargaining, or even if the 'big hit' has just been discovered and research is foolishly seen as unnecessary for a while. this is an industry where foreign work visas are rife, with threats of the jobs being declared 'unnecessary' if extra hours aren't put in (with the poor folks having to return to their original countries). this is the industry which tries to offshore as many aspects of the process as possible. there is no "demanding" anything, unless you already have another situation lined-up; and even then they threaten you with NDAs and non-competition clauses.
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      I think that was "demanding" in the sense of giving regulatory bodies authority to force things like that.
      - theophrastus 11y ago
        In the states there really is no active regulatory agency to pursue this; the FDA having been all but gutted, (all the clinical 'safety' research is now done by the applying company itself). One only has examine who are among the largest political donors to both parties to understand why this might be.
    - CaptainZapp 11y ago
      this is the industry which tries to offshore as many aspects of the process as possible And this : http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/ http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/ Is a very interesting and quite frightening take on the potential consequences of such offshoring.

by subway 11y ago

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.
      - darkmighty 11y ago
        They do not operate in a market, but there are market-driven pressures for developing new drugs: efficient companies assign research priority according to their expected returns from drug development. In any case, reform is definitively needed; and complaining without demanding reform is pointless. Discovering new drugs is a scientific endeavor and so it really should be as open as possible. I am a little skeptical of plain massive government research agencies, but maybe it's a good way to go. Maybe patent reform or something else is instead better. If you look at machine learning research the industry is not bad at sharing results because of two factors, apparently: 1) Companies know that progress will be much faster if everyone decides to share 2) To attract to researchers, they need to show they do high caliber research and share.
- theophrastus 11y ago
  "demanding"? this is an industry which fires us if we ask for a raise, or hint at collective bargaining, or even if the 'big hit' has just been discovered and research is foolishly seen as unnecessary for a while. this is an industry where foreign work visas are rife, with threats of the jobs being declared 'unnecessary' if extra hours aren't put in (with the poor folks having to return to their original countries). this is the industry which tries to offshore as many aspects of the process as possible. there is no "demanding" anything, unless you already have another situation lined-up; and even then they threaten you with NDAs and non-competition clauses.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    I think that was "demanding" in the sense of giving regulatory bodies authority to force things like that.
    - theophrastus 11y ago
      In the states there really is no active regulatory agency to pursue this; the FDA having been all but gutted, (all the clinical 'safety' research is now done by the applying company itself). One only has examine who are among the largest political donors to both parties to understand why this might be.
  - CaptainZapp 11y ago
    this is the industry which tries to offshore as many aspects of the process as possible And this : http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/ http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/ Is a very interesting and quite frightening take on the potential consequences of such offshoring.