Re: cost - you're conflating two different things. The cost of new drugs at the time of introduction has gone up. The new drugs of 2020 are more expensive than

Re: cost - you're conflating two different things. The cost of new drugs at the time of introduction has gone up. The new drugs of 2020 are more expensive than the new drugs of 2000. However, with a few high-profile exceptions, the cost of any individual drug goes down over time once generics are introduced. The expensive new drugs of today are the affordable generics of tomorrow. Biologics are genuinely expensive to manufacture, so the cost of the current generation of immunotherapies will remain substantial, but it will ultimately drop to a fraction of what it is today. Re: survival benefits - population level data about overall survival is tricky to get right, and issues like earlier detection leading to longer measured survival without actual benefit are real. And I'm sure that if you tweak the statistics just right, you can argue that all of the advances of the last 50 years have accomplished nothing. But that ignores a hugely important fact: we have randomized controlled trials showing that people who get these drugs live longer than an identical population that doesn't get them. I was going to spend a while finding citations, but let's go with the comment /u/dannykwells just posted: "This article is absolute 100% bullshit. -Metastatic melanoma: used to be lethal, now 50% cure rate.[1] -Non small cell lung cancer: same, now around 25% [2] -Breast cancer used to have a terrible prognisis, now 75% survive. [3] -Not to mention the myriad of blood cancers with new, strong, cell therapy treatment options with 40-50% durable cure rate. I don't know this person, but seriously, whoever he is, fuck you dude. Millions of us work day and night trying to improve care, and 99% of us arent getting rich. [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1709684 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1709684 [2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1801946 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1801946 [3] https://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/20100930" https://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/20100930"