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> The 'ideal' drug from a business point of view not only not cures the patient long term... There is another one. Vaccines. Or any preventive medicines that d

> The 'ideal' drug from a business point of view not only not cures the patient long term... There is another one. Vaccines. Or any preventive medicines that does not actually require people to be sick. You just need to inject massive amount of fear of diseases (Statistics is your friend here) into the populace to create a nice, ever increasing demand of your produce...

dmurray 9y ago
Vaccines also only get administered once, or a small number of times, per patient. It's hard for them to be as profitable as a drug which is "take this 3 times a day with meals, for the rest of your life, or you die".
PeterStuer 9y ago
I don't agree. Herd immunization is a solid concept. Besides, AFAIK most vaccines do not just work short-term while increasing the likelihood of future vaccination need.
masklinn 9y ago
> There is another one. Vaccines. Vaccines are absolute shit from a business perspective. They're expensive to develop, generally cheap to produce, and their administration is a single or limited event point. Sure you've got breadth but you've got no depth, once an individual is vaccinated they're done, or maybe they'll need an other round years from now. Big pharma companies absolutely hate vaccines, having people pay for repeated treatment is way more business-beneficial. And as other commenters have noted, herd immunity is a well-studied concept, and vaccines have very much proved their worth multiple times over.
- buvanshak 9y ago
  Vaccines provide, a nice, predictable, ever increasing demand. It is even possible to create arbitrary demand in the case of preventive measures such as these. Profit from any normal drug is dependent on chance that a certain number of people will fall sick of the corresponding disease. The company cannot also count on outbreaks since it will have no clue when, where and for which disease the outbreak will occur. The expire date for drugs means that the companies will not be able to stockpile these drugs in hopes that there will be an outbreak some point in future..
- dominotw 9y ago
  > administration is a single or limited event point. What about flu vaccines? Even govt runs ads urging people to get their flu shots, even though they have been shown to be useless.
  - kdelok 9y ago
    Flu vaccines aren't useless, but they also aren't 100% effective. The CDC reckoned they reduce the risk by about 40-60%. Flu is a variable pathogen, which means that it evolves to look different from an immune perspective over time. It follows clustered patterns, where the flu strain will look pretty similar (and vaccines will be more effective), then it "jumps" to a new cluster every few years or so (and the vaccines will likely be less effective). There's a whole bunch of work goes into predicting what flu strains make most sense to use for the vaccine in a given flu season.
    - dominotw 9y ago
      > CDC reckoned they reduce the risk by about 40-60%. curious, Do you have a link to this by any chance? According to this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693492/ After looking at "328 households with 1441 members, including 839 children," for an entire year (2011) these authors determined that there was a difference of 4/10ths of one percentage point between those who received flu vaccine and those who didn't. The infection risk was 8.5% in the vaccinated and 8.9% in the unvaccinated. According to this CDC study https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/64/5/544/2758477 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/64/5/544/2758477 "We observed decreasing vaccine effectiveness with increasing time. Maximum vaccine effectiveness was observed shortly after vaccination, followed by a decline..... Vaccine effectiveness remained greater than zero for at least six months for influenza A(H1N1) and influenza B and at least five months for influenza A(H3N2) viruses." They say "greater than zero" , far cry from 40- 60% :D Cannot post more replies atm, but for people saying 5% is still something. > Going from 8.9% to 8.5% is a 5% reduction in flu cases. If this translates to 5% fewer sick days during the flu-period and a 5% reduction in doctor visits that are due to flu symptoms (some people go to the doctor for everything), that can absolutely be a reason for the government to want people to get their flu shots. This line of reasoning assumes that there are only positive effects from vaccines. There are many many side effects of flu vaccines. Just to quote one, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0136539 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... "Hospitalizations were slightly more common among subjects who were vaccinated than among the others" "hospitalizations for pneumonia and influenza, that were 47% more likely among subjects who received the tetravalent vaccine as compared with those who were not vaccinated."
pjc50 9y ago
Vaccines are one of medicine's great discoveries that free humanity. The only reason people aren't terrified of disease and think they can get away with lying about vaccination is that we've driven it into the corners. Unpreventable diseases are quite capable of creating their own fear, like the AIDS epidemic.
- buvanshak 9y ago
  I am sorry, but what part of my comment are you responding to?
ta76567656 9y ago
I rather enjoy never having gotten smallpox or polio.
- buvanshak 9y ago
  What part of my comment are you responding to?
  - bonzini 9y ago
    The part about fear of diseases, for example. We've always feared diseases, and the fear was due to having seen babies or young people die of diseases that have now almost disappeared, such as measles. People that think they know better, however, have lost this fear and are responsible of the failure to establish herd immunity, and of the occasional deaths of immunodepressed or just unlucky people due to preventable diseases.
    - buvanshak 9y ago
      You seem to be responding to something I didn't say. I only said that demand for any preventive measures against X, can be artificially inflated by injecting fear of X into the populace. Since vaccines are a preventive measure, this is applicable to vaccines as well.
collyw 9y ago
Antivaccers here? I expected better, but I see you have been rightful down voted.
- buvanshak 9y ago
  Which part of my comment is "Anti-vaccine"?
- dominotw 9y ago
  Do you get flu vaccine every year?
  - collyw 9y ago
    Strawman. I get vaccines for serious diseases when visiting foreign countries. Yellow fever, hepatitis, tetanus amongst others. So far I have manged to avoid becoming autistic. I am in good health so have no real reason to get a flu shot. (One year my work offered me one and I took it).
    - dominotw 9y ago
      > preventive medicines that does not actually require people to be sick. > I am in good health so have no real reason to get a flu shot. Aren't you saying the exact same thing that you called "antivaccer". CDC doesn't recommed flu to people who are not * in good health* , its a population wide recommendation. You being in good health is not relevant to GP's point of recommending vaccines to people who are not sick( which you seem to agree with).

dmurray 9y ago

Vaccines also only get administered once, or a small number of times, per patient. It's hard for them to be as profitable as a drug which is "take this 3 times a day with meals, for the rest of your life, or you die".

PeterStuer 9y ago

I don't agree. Herd immunization is a solid concept. Besides, AFAIK most vaccines do not just work short-term while increasing the likelihood of future vaccination need.

masklinn 9y ago

> There is another one. Vaccines. Vaccines are absolute shit from a business perspective. They're expensive to develop, generally cheap to produce, and their administration is a single or limited event point. Sure you've got breadth but you've got no depth, once an individual is vaccinated they're done, or maybe they'll need an other round years from now. Big pharma companies absolutely hate vaccines, having people pay for repeated treatment is way more business-beneficial. And as other commenters have noted, herd immunity is a well-studied concept, and vaccines have very much proved their worth multiple times over.

buvanshak 9y ago
Vaccines provide, a nice, predictable, ever increasing demand. It is even possible to create arbitrary demand in the case of preventive measures such as these. Profit from any normal drug is dependent on chance that a certain number of people will fall sick of the corresponding disease. The company cannot also count on outbreaks since it will have no clue when, where and for which disease the outbreak will occur. The expire date for drugs means that the companies will not be able to stockpile these drugs in hopes that there will be an outbreak some point in future..
dominotw 9y ago
> administration is a single or limited event point. What about flu vaccines? Even govt runs ads urging people to get their flu shots, even though they have been shown to be useless.
- kdelok 9y ago
  Flu vaccines aren't useless, but they also aren't 100% effective. The CDC reckoned they reduce the risk by about 40-60%. Flu is a variable pathogen, which means that it evolves to look different from an immune perspective over time. It follows clustered patterns, where the flu strain will look pretty similar (and vaccines will be more effective), then it "jumps" to a new cluster every few years or so (and the vaccines will likely be less effective). There's a whole bunch of work goes into predicting what flu strains make most sense to use for the vaccine in a given flu season.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    > CDC reckoned they reduce the risk by about 40-60%. curious, Do you have a link to this by any chance? According to this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693492/ After looking at "328 households with 1441 members, including 839 children," for an entire year (2011) these authors determined that there was a difference of 4/10ths of one percentage point between those who received flu vaccine and those who didn't. The infection risk was 8.5% in the vaccinated and 8.9% in the unvaccinated. According to this CDC study https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/64/5/544/2758477 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/64/5/544/2758477 "We observed decreasing vaccine effectiveness with increasing time. Maximum vaccine effectiveness was observed shortly after vaccination, followed by a decline..... Vaccine effectiveness remained greater than zero for at least six months for influenza A(H1N1) and influenza B and at least five months for influenza A(H3N2) viruses." They say "greater than zero" , far cry from 40- 60% :D Cannot post more replies atm, but for people saying 5% is still something. > Going from 8.9% to 8.5% is a 5% reduction in flu cases. If this translates to 5% fewer sick days during the flu-period and a 5% reduction in doctor visits that are due to flu symptoms (some people go to the doctor for everything), that can absolutely be a reason for the government to want people to get their flu shots. This line of reasoning assumes that there are only positive effects from vaccines. There are many many side effects of flu vaccines. Just to quote one, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0136539 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... "Hospitalizations were slightly more common among subjects who were vaccinated than among the others" "hospitalizations for pneumonia and influenza, that were 47% more likely among subjects who received the tetravalent vaccine as compared with those who were not vaccinated."

pjc50 9y ago

Vaccines are one of medicine's great discoveries that free humanity. The only reason people aren't terrified of disease and think they can get away with lying about vaccination is that we've driven it into the corners. Unpreventable diseases are quite capable of creating their own fear, like the AIDS epidemic.

buvanshak 9y ago
I am sorry, but what part of my comment are you responding to?

ta76567656 9y ago

I rather enjoy never having gotten smallpox or polio.

buvanshak 9y ago
What part of my comment are you responding to?
- bonzini 9y ago
  The part about fear of diseases, for example. We've always feared diseases, and the fear was due to having seen babies or young people die of diseases that have now almost disappeared, such as measles. People that think they know better, however, have lost this fear and are responsible of the failure to establish herd immunity, and of the occasional deaths of immunodepressed or just unlucky people due to preventable diseases.
  - buvanshak 9y ago
    You seem to be responding to something I didn't say. I only said that demand for any preventive measures against X, can be artificially inflated by injecting fear of X into the populace. Since vaccines are a preventive measure, this is applicable to vaccines as well.

collyw 9y ago

Antivaccers here? I expected better, but I see you have been rightful down voted.

buvanshak 9y ago
Which part of my comment is "Anti-vaccine"?
dominotw 9y ago
Do you get flu vaccine every year?
- collyw 9y ago
  Strawman. I get vaccines for serious diseases when visiting foreign countries. Yellow fever, hepatitis, tetanus amongst others. So far I have manged to avoid becoming autistic. I am in good health so have no real reason to get a flu shot. (One year my work offered me one and I took it).
  - dominotw 9y ago
    > preventive medicines that does not actually require people to be sick. > I am in good health so have no real reason to get a flu shot. Aren't you saying the exact same thing that you called "antivaccer". CDC doesn't recommed flu to people who are not * in good health* , its a population wide recommendation. You being in good health is not relevant to GP's point of recommending vaccines to people who are not sick( which you seem to agree with).