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The people who do the actual discovery are not paid an exorbitant amount of money. They mostly just want to do research and solve problems while living a comfo

The people who do the actual discovery are not paid an exorbitant amount of money. They mostly just want to do research and solve problems while living a comfortable life. A pharma company making billions in profit isn’t necessary. It’s just the common way it currently is done. There are other ways to accomplish the same goal. We could try to replicate Jonas Salks’ way Of doing things.

roadnottaken 9y ago
I work in drug discovery. You're right that the bench-scientists don't usually get rich. But it's an extraordinarily risky, expensive, and unpredictable business and for every billion dollar drug there's a graveyard of failed companies and projects that didn't make it. The only business reason to take those risks are for a chance at patent-protected profit. And those bench scientists wouldn't have labs to work in if investors and rich companies weren't willing to pay for it.
- tkahnoski 9y ago
  I was skeptical of this graveyard because it gets referenced a lot, largely due to how we humans constantly ignore the sunk-cost fallacy all the time. BUT it turns out the FDA is what prevents that from happening, and yes less drugs are getting approved. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-success/success-rates-for-experimental-drugs-falls-study-idUSTRE71D2U920110214 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-success/s...
  - mawelch 9y ago
    I think you're seriously underestimating how much thought goes into the risk-benefit analysis during drug development. The FDA does create some regulatory burden but they certainly aren't the main driver of why drugs fail. Drugs fail because they don't work or they cause unintended toxicity.
- yequalsx 9y ago
  What about government funding research? It doesn’t have to be just rich people or corporations. It could be all of us in the form of government. I believe that most of a drug’s overall cost is marketing. I might be wrong on this but it is a significant, useless expense. Remove filthy rich profit motive and we might get drug companies that don’t resort to shenanigans.
  - roadnottaken 9y ago
    You are simply wrong on this. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new drug, prior to approval and marketing. What percent of a companies budget is spend on marketing versus R&D at a given time is kind of irrelevant because (1) the development costs occur before market and (2) often drugs are in-licensed or acquired after significant expense towards R&D has been expended. They don’t buy all the companies whose products fail (most of them) so that cost isn’t factored in. Making new drugs is very expensive and risky. Edit: I’m describing the development of novel drugs here. “Me-too” drugs are significantly less risky and probably less costly but there’s still a lot of risk amd expense.
    - grasshopperpurp 9y ago
      >We found that the premiums pharmaceutical companies earn from charging substantially higher prices for their medications in the US compared to other Western countries generates substantially more than the companies spend globally on their research and development. This finding counters the claim that the higher prices paid by US patients and taxpayers are necessary to fund research and development. Rather, there are billions of dollars left over even after worldwide research budgets are covered. To put the excess revenue in perspective, lowering the magnitude of the US premium to a level where it matches global R&D expenditures across the 15 companies we assessed would have saved US patients, businesses, and taxpayers approximately $40 billion in 2015, a year for which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that total US spending on pharmaceuticals was $325 billion. Curious to hear your thoughts. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170307.059036/full/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170307.05903...
    - 9y ago

roadnottaken 9y ago

I work in drug discovery. You're right that the bench-scientists don't usually get rich. But it's an extraordinarily risky, expensive, and unpredictable business and for every billion dollar drug there's a graveyard of failed companies and projects that didn't make it. The only business reason to take those risks are for a chance at patent-protected profit. And those bench scientists wouldn't have labs to work in if investors and rich companies weren't willing to pay for it.

tkahnoski 9y ago
I was skeptical of this graveyard because it gets referenced a lot, largely due to how we humans constantly ignore the sunk-cost fallacy all the time. BUT it turns out the FDA is what prevents that from happening, and yes less drugs are getting approved. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-success/success-rates-for-experimental-drugs-falls-study-idUSTRE71D2U920110214 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-success/s...
- mawelch 9y ago
  I think you're seriously underestimating how much thought goes into the risk-benefit analysis during drug development. The FDA does create some regulatory burden but they certainly aren't the main driver of why drugs fail. Drugs fail because they don't work or they cause unintended toxicity.
yequalsx 9y ago
What about government funding research? It doesn’t have to be just rich people or corporations. It could be all of us in the form of government. I believe that most of a drug’s overall cost is marketing. I might be wrong on this but it is a significant, useless expense. Remove filthy rich profit motive and we might get drug companies that don’t resort to shenanigans.
- roadnottaken 9y ago
  You are simply wrong on this. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new drug, prior to approval and marketing. What percent of a companies budget is spend on marketing versus R&D at a given time is kind of irrelevant because (1) the development costs occur before market and (2) often drugs are in-licensed or acquired after significant expense towards R&D has been expended. They don’t buy all the companies whose products fail (most of them) so that cost isn’t factored in. Making new drugs is very expensive and risky. Edit: I’m describing the development of novel drugs here. “Me-too” drugs are significantly less risky and probably less costly but there’s still a lot of risk amd expense.
  - grasshopperpurp 9y ago
    >We found that the premiums pharmaceutical companies earn from charging substantially higher prices for their medications in the US compared to other Western countries generates substantially more than the companies spend globally on their research and development. This finding counters the claim that the higher prices paid by US patients and taxpayers are necessary to fund research and development. Rather, there are billions of dollars left over even after worldwide research budgets are covered. To put the excess revenue in perspective, lowering the magnitude of the US premium to a level where it matches global R&D expenditures across the 15 companies we assessed would have saved US patients, businesses, and taxpayers approximately $40 billion in 2015, a year for which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that total US spending on pharmaceuticals was $325 billion. Curious to hear your thoughts. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170307.059036/full/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170307.05903...
  - 9y ago