4 ms·

Some minor/major issues with your line of thought: The US isn’t the world. Having the FDA essentially own and also pick winners and losers on the R&D market eno

Some minor/major issues with your line of thought: The US isn’t the world. Having the FDA essentially own and also pick winners and losers on the R&D market enormously misses their role, and messes up incentives, your essentially asking for all the money in The pharma industry to be funneled through the gatekeeper who’s traditional role has been to say “no way in hell we’ll let you put this hugely profitable drug on the market because it’s highly addictive, causes liver failure and you haven’t evne finished clinical trials on it...” imagine if the public will trust the guys who’s not only saying “yes this drug is definitely safe” but in the same breath is also ensuring 3 new lambos for his personal fleet. As for the idea of splitting research and productions, that is an absolutely incredible idea, so great in fact that it’s already standard practice to see biotechs spin up only doing R&D with a plan to get bought up once they go to production. But honestly, it feels like a scary totalitarian government like reality if we move to a state where the FDA starts getting heavily involved in the financials and starts picking winners and losers. Next thing you know Trump will be declaring through executive orders that hydrochloroquine is safe and effective and that production must go ahead With a company he happens to be invested in, but unlike current reality there won’t be any actual scientific checks of those bogus claims.

DougWebb 6y ago
The FDA wouldn't be picking winners and losers. It would be picking scientifically valid lines of research, based on proposals from private companies. These are government employees; they're not buying lambos. Do you see CDC scientists getting rich? Today's drug startup company, which thinks it has a product that could be successfully developed, would write up a proposal to apply for FDA funding. If the FDA scientists decide the proposal has merit, they get funding. If the FDA thinks the company is nuts, the company can still self-fund and do the R&D on their own. Either way the normal testing phases are needed for final approval. After that, if the FDA funded the R&D, it gets ownership and licenses out the manufacturing. The startup company can move on to work on something else, or having already been paid by the FDA to do the R&D, they can close up shop. If they self-funded the R&D, then they keep ownership and get to license the manufacturing, just like they do today. (Getting bought-out is just a transfer of manufacturing rights from the startup to the pharma, so that can still happen if the startup retains the rights.) I'm imagining lots of startup companies developing nutritional-based vitamins and herbal products, getting paid to take them through the testing process, and then after approval the startup just moves on to another compound and/or disease. They could run as profitable little businesses for a long time doing this, and we'll get lots of non-patentable but fully tested products on the market that are cheap as dirt for the consumers. We can't get these products today because no one will pay for the testing process, so instead we have unregulated snake-oil products with little to no quality control and vague unverifiable claims about what they're good for.

DougWebb 6y ago

The FDA wouldn't be picking winners and losers. It would be picking scientifically valid lines of research, based on proposals from private companies. These are government employees; they're not buying lambos. Do you see CDC scientists getting rich? Today's drug startup company, which thinks it has a product that could be successfully developed, would write up a proposal to apply for FDA funding. If the FDA scientists decide the proposal has merit, they get funding. If the FDA thinks the company is nuts, the company can still self-fund and do the R&D on their own. Either way the normal testing phases are needed for final approval. After that, if the FDA funded the R&D, it gets ownership and licenses out the manufacturing. The startup company can move on to work on something else, or having already been paid by the FDA to do the R&D, they can close up shop. If they self-funded the R&D, then they keep ownership and get to license the manufacturing, just like they do today. (Getting bought-out is just a transfer of manufacturing rights from the startup to the pharma, so that can still happen if the startup retains the rights.) I'm imagining lots of startup companies developing nutritional-based vitamins and herbal products, getting paid to take them through the testing process, and then after approval the startup just moves on to another compound and/or disease. They could run as profitable little businesses for a long time doing this, and we'll get lots of non-patentable but fully tested products on the market that are cheap as dirt for the consumers. We can't get these products today because no one will pay for the testing process, so instead we have unregulated snake-oil products with little to no quality control and vague unverifiable claims about what they're good for.