5 ms·

Agree with some of your points but you are missing something essential here. You don't pay for the cost of the ingredients in pharmaceutical products (otherwis

Agree with some of your points but you are missing something essential here. You don't pay for the cost of the ingredients in pharmaceutical products (otherwise the cost of most drugs would be 1/10th of what they are or even less), but for the IP behind it. You need clinical trials to demonstrate that something works for a specific condition, and this is what gets an approved stamp by the FDA and integration with the reimbursement system, along with a negotiation on pricing. If there were no such incentives, then nobody would do any kind of clinical trial for compounds that are already widely available in OTC form, and the only thing you would have is anecdotal evidence (i.e. noise) to know what works or not. Whether this is the right way to incentivize research and development is a valid topic to discuss, however.

asdff 4y ago
To be fair its not so simple. You fund the clinical trial perhaps, but you also fund shareholder profits. This incentive model is actually pretty perverse because there are diseases that aren't seeing drugs developed because they are so rare that a treatment will never be given to enough patients to turn a profit. A better incentive model is to have the government identify diseases that lack a solid treatment option and fund clinical trials through direct taxation versus profiting off of the sick or abusing the for profit insurance process to cover these huge fees.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > A better incentive model is to have the government identify diseases that lack a solid treatment option and fund clinical trials through direct taxation The government is the worst tool for this job, because they would need to hire external experts to assess which disease should be studied, and those experts would be already in bed with the industry for a long time. You would just be diverting tax-payer money in a different way.
  - asdff 4y ago
    How do you think government research money is currently directed? Sure you get people from industry but you also get people from academia and government as well filling these positions. That's basically anyone with domain knowledge. Sure people can be corrupt and evil or whatever, but that's why you have other checks in your system to deal with it. If you think it can't be done just because 'government', that's not a strong argument because literally any sort of person in any position in any org, public or private, could be corrupted, and the race to the bottom of this logic is to trust nothing and no one.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >The government is the worst tool for this job, because they would need to hire external experts to assess which disease should be studied, and those experts would be already in bed with the industry for a long time. There's no need to "hire external experts". They could have their own pool.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      Like the FDA? We see how well it works...
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Well, other countries managed to solve it, as they've managed to have schools without shootings, cities with public transport, no gerrymandering, and so on. So it's not unsurmountable, just badly done...
        ekianjo 4y ago
        other countries fail at research. there is close to zero new drugs that are not developed in the US
        coldtea 4y ago
        You'd be surprised, especially since most of the "new drugs developed in the US" are crap consumer oriented drugs with no real medicinal value (a trillion snake-oil industry) and differentiating qualities, and reiterations of existing stuff to get new patent leases... Even so, https://www.iam-media.com/article/switzerland-once-again-named-the-worlds-most-innovative-country#:~:text=The%20top%20pharmaceutical%20patents%20are,of%20the%20most%20biotech%20patents https://www.iam-media.com/article/switzerland-once-again-nam....
        ekianjo 4y ago
        > "new drugs developed in the US" are crap consumer oriented drugs with no real medicinal value (a trillion snake-oil industry) This is true to some extent (not all drugs approved require more than just superiority vs placebo), but that reads like throwing the baby out with the water. There's a ton of great drugs developed every year that are clearly very innovative in terms of mode of action, and by far and large those come from the US.
  - Glawen 4y ago
    Where does this hate from government Congress from? Government funded research is how a lot of research is done in Europe. If you saw these academics and researchers salary you would laugh, but still they produce stuff without being in bed with anyone.
qwertyX99 4y ago
The vast majority of new drugs in the US research was funded by the taxpayer. Innovation comes mostly from the public sector, not private sector. This applies equally to technology. Private-led innovation is hyped by these industries PR departments. DARPA, NASA, NIH don't have a PR department. References: 1/ Overall, NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $187 billion." (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3731819 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3731819) Search Mariana Mazzucato talks, books on innovation, example: https://www.noemamag.com/big-pharma-is-hurting-drug-innovation https://www.noemamag.com/big-pharma-is-hurting-drug-innovati... 2/ "Apple Didn’t Build Your iPhone; Your Taxes Did": https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-entrepreneurial-state-appl https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-entrepreneurial-sta... 3/ 97%-99% of Astrazenneca covid vaccine research was public+charity funded( ref https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34937701/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34937701/ )

asdff 4y ago

To be fair its not so simple. You fund the clinical trial perhaps, but you also fund shareholder profits. This incentive model is actually pretty perverse because there are diseases that aren't seeing drugs developed because they are so rare that a treatment will never be given to enough patients to turn a profit. A better incentive model is to have the government identify diseases that lack a solid treatment option and fund clinical trials through direct taxation versus profiting off of the sick or abusing the for profit insurance process to cover these huge fees.

ekianjo 4y ago
> A better incentive model is to have the government identify diseases that lack a solid treatment option and fund clinical trials through direct taxation The government is the worst tool for this job, because they would need to hire external experts to assess which disease should be studied, and those experts would be already in bed with the industry for a long time. You would just be diverting tax-payer money in a different way.
- asdff 4y ago
  How do you think government research money is currently directed? Sure you get people from industry but you also get people from academia and government as well filling these positions. That's basically anyone with domain knowledge. Sure people can be corrupt and evil or whatever, but that's why you have other checks in your system to deal with it. If you think it can't be done just because 'government', that's not a strong argument because literally any sort of person in any position in any org, public or private, could be corrupted, and the race to the bottom of this logic is to trust nothing and no one.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >The government is the worst tool for this job, because they would need to hire external experts to assess which disease should be studied, and those experts would be already in bed with the industry for a long time. There's no need to "hire external experts". They could have their own pool.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    Like the FDA? We see how well it works...
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Well, other countries managed to solve it, as they've managed to have schools without shootings, cities with public transport, no gerrymandering, and so on. So it's not unsurmountable, just badly done...
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        other countries fail at research. there is close to zero new drugs that are not developed in the US
        coldtea 4y ago
        You'd be surprised, especially since most of the "new drugs developed in the US" are crap consumer oriented drugs with no real medicinal value (a trillion snake-oil industry) and differentiating qualities, and reiterations of existing stuff to get new patent leases... Even so, https://www.iam-media.com/article/switzerland-once-again-named-the-worlds-most-innovative-country#:~:text=The%20top%20pharmaceutical%20patents%20are,of%20the%20most%20biotech%20patents https://www.iam-media.com/article/switzerland-once-again-nam....
        ekianjo 4y ago
        > "new drugs developed in the US" are crap consumer oriented drugs with no real medicinal value (a trillion snake-oil industry) This is true to some extent (not all drugs approved require more than just superiority vs placebo), but that reads like throwing the baby out with the water. There's a ton of great drugs developed every year that are clearly very innovative in terms of mode of action, and by far and large those come from the US.
- Glawen 4y ago
  Where does this hate from government Congress from? Government funded research is how a lot of research is done in Europe. If you saw these academics and researchers salary you would laugh, but still they produce stuff without being in bed with anyone.

qwertyX99 4y ago

The vast majority of new drugs in the US research was funded by the taxpayer. Innovation comes mostly from the public sector, not private sector. This applies equally to technology. Private-led innovation is hyped by these industries PR departments. DARPA, NASA, NIH don't have a PR department. References: 1/ Overall, NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $187 billion." (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3731819 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3731819) Search Mariana Mazzucato talks, books on innovation, example: https://www.noemamag.com/big-pharma-is-hurting-drug-innovation https://www.noemamag.com/big-pharma-is-hurting-drug-innovati... 2/ "Apple Didn’t Build Your iPhone; Your Taxes Did": https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-entrepreneurial-state-appl https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-entrepreneurial-sta... 3/ 97%-99% of Astrazenneca covid vaccine research was public+charity funded( ref https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34937701/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34937701/ )