4 ms·

I spent 8 years in pharmaceutical industry R&D and this is so ill-informed I feel compelled to refute it every time someone says it. I know it sounds like it ma

by JunkDNA 15y ago

I spent 8 years in pharmaceutical industry R&D and this is so ill-informed I feel compelled to refute it every time someone says it. I know it sounds like it makes sense on the surface, but it's just outright false. I worked in cancer research with some really, really smart people. Every single one of them was sincerely hopeful that the drug they were working on would be a total cure. I know it's hard to believe, but pharma companies are composed of real people who have seen patients, friends, and relatives die of cancer or similar diseases. Researchers want so badly to find a cure for the disease they are working on. The existence of vaccines are proof that when pharma companies can cure something, they do it. I have been in conversations where business factors for a drug were discussed and I can tell you the one thing that was never said was, "Hey guys, make sure it's not an actual cure, or we'll need to kill the project".

iliis 15y ago
Nice to see that not everybody is a greedy asshole :) A commenter on Slashdot gave another good point on why the industry HAS a reason to develop a cure for cancer: If any "Big Pharma" company invented a cure for cancer tomorrow, you can bet your ass that they'd be all over it in a heartbeat. Why? Because, then that company would forever be known as the company that cured cancer. Every new product they make would be a pot of gold. Every ad they put out would be "Muhdikard, a new treatment for erectile dysfunction, from Drugco. We cured cancer.". Every drug company on the face of the planet would kill for that kind of marketing, not to mention the money from selling the cancer cure. Source: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2375188&cid=37057490 http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2375188&cid=...
mortenjorck 15y ago
Firstly: You're right; I am ill-informed on this. I haven't any doubt that you or your colleagues had and continue to have strong humanitarian convictions in your work, and I was out of line to speak so broadly. I recognize that the argument I made earlier is something of an old saw. But you and I both know that businesses on the scale of most pharma companies are not run only by researchers and engineers, and that the explicit reasons for business decisions anywhere often stem from any number of unspoken ones. I don't imagine even the coldest of bean counters ever says "we need to make sure this research doesn't lead to a cure," and I doubt such a black-and-white assessment of a complex R&D process even occurs to them. But incentives are incentives, and humans are masters of rationalization. I'm heartened to learn that your teams never felt pressure to put business interests ahead of patient interests. I sincerely hope your experience is common.
- JunkDNA 15y ago
  Thanks for your comments. The pharma industry has a lousy public perception, some of which is quite justified, so it can be hard to separate the reality from the perception. There is also a practical reason why I can assure you that people are usually swinging for the fences, especially in cancer: most of the time you don't even know if a drug will work, let alone work well. There is no way to predict (with the obvious exception of vaccines which owing to biology are destined to be cures from the beginning) what your drug will really do until it hits the clinic. So there isn't even a mechanism to offer people an incentive to develop a drug someone has to take over and over vs. a cure, especially in cancer. Certainly, there are chronic conditions like diabetes where there is no real "cure" on the horizon because of the biology of the situation. But in the case of cancer, you almost have to try for a total success because you know you're likely to get far, far less than that when you hit the clinic. Because of this problem, one of the bigger issues in pharma is that flawed projects are allowed to linger long after they should have just been scrapped because powerful scientists believed they would work and convinced management to keep funding them despite some of their issues.
StavrosK 15y ago
The most concise version of this is something I heard a researcher on TV say: "If we had a cure for cancer, do you think we'd be letting our family die of it?"

by JunkDNA 15y ago

iliis 15y ago

Nice to see that not everybody is a greedy asshole :) A commenter on Slashdot gave another good point on why the industry HAS a reason to develop a cure for cancer: If any "Big Pharma" company invented a cure for cancer tomorrow, you can bet your ass that they'd be all over it in a heartbeat. Why? Because, then that company would forever be known as the company that cured cancer. Every new product they make would be a pot of gold. Every ad they put out would be "Muhdikard, a new treatment for erectile dysfunction, from Drugco. We cured cancer.". Every drug company on the face of the planet would kill for that kind of marketing, not to mention the money from selling the cancer cure. Source: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2375188&cid=37057490 http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2375188&cid=...

mortenjorck 15y ago

Firstly: You're right; I am ill-informed on this. I haven't any doubt that you or your colleagues had and continue to have strong humanitarian convictions in your work, and I was out of line to speak so broadly. I recognize that the argument I made earlier is something of an old saw. But you and I both know that businesses on the scale of most pharma companies are not run only by researchers and engineers, and that the explicit reasons for business decisions anywhere often stem from any number of unspoken ones. I don't imagine even the coldest of bean counters ever says "we need to make sure this research doesn't lead to a cure," and I doubt such a black-and-white assessment of a complex R&D process even occurs to them. But incentives are incentives, and humans are masters of rationalization. I'm heartened to learn that your teams never felt pressure to put business interests ahead of patient interests. I sincerely hope your experience is common.

JunkDNA 15y ago
Thanks for your comments. The pharma industry has a lousy public perception, some of which is quite justified, so it can be hard to separate the reality from the perception. There is also a practical reason why I can assure you that people are usually swinging for the fences, especially in cancer: most of the time you don't even know if a drug will work, let alone work well. There is no way to predict (with the obvious exception of vaccines which owing to biology are destined to be cures from the beginning) what your drug will really do until it hits the clinic. So there isn't even a mechanism to offer people an incentive to develop a drug someone has to take over and over vs. a cure, especially in cancer. Certainly, there are chronic conditions like diabetes where there is no real "cure" on the horizon because of the biology of the situation. But in the case of cancer, you almost have to try for a total success because you know you're likely to get far, far less than that when you hit the clinic. Because of this problem, one of the bigger issues in pharma is that flawed projects are allowed to linger long after they should have just been scrapped because powerful scientists believed they would work and convinced management to keep funding them despite some of their issues.

StavrosK 15y ago

The most concise version of this is something I heard a researcher on TV say: "If we had a cure for cancer, do you think we'd be letting our family die of it?"