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Only read the beginning of this screed, but its a unique and unlikely to be repeated situation until the next pandemic model. "Competitive industry" normally s

Only read the beginning of this screed, but its a unique and unlikely to be repeated situation until the next pandemic model. "Competitive industry" normally spends the big bucks to do Phase II and especially expensive Phase III trials. And as you note, manufacturing it. Which Pfizer did without Operation Warp Speed money until it started failing to deliver on its promises in December 2020. May have gotten some money from Germany through BioNTech which was the company that actually developed it. The claim "By one estimate, the National Institutes of Health spent $17 billion on vaccine technologies fundamental to the Covid-19 vaccine." goes back to the mid-20th Century, is so broad as to be useless and is obviously disqualifying propaganda: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-covid-vaccine-built-billion-nih.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-covid-vaccine-built-b...

cdtwigg 4y ago
Yeah it’s the trials that are really expensive, not the basic research. The government gets to spread its dollars around to lots of individual researchers but if they were instead using that money to fund phase III trials (1) we’d have a lot a lot less money for basic research (2) we’d fund a lot fewer phase III trials so (3) we’d see much less drug development overall. Also I’d worry about a potential conflict of interest if the same government is conducting and evaluating the results of drug trials.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Never mind the fact that 17 billion is on par with the annual R&D spend at one Pharma company. I think a more interesting comparison would be all national funding for drug R&D versus all corporate R&D funding. This could be done on an annual basis or historic. NIH budget was 43 billion in 2021 for all healthcare sectors Top 10 US Drug company[1] R&D budgets [2] were: 1: Johnson & Johnson $15 Billion 2: Pfizer $14 Billion 3: Merck $13 Billion 4: AbbVie $7 Billion 5: Bristol $11 Billion 6: Abbott $3 Billion 7: Amgen $5 Billion 8: Gilead $5 Billion 9: Eli Lilly $7 Billion 10: Biogen 2.5 Billion Total 91+ Billion Keep in mind that those are only US headquartered drug companies, and some of the biggest players like Roche and Novartis are in Europe[3] https://www.pharmapproach.com/top-10-pharmaceutical-companies-in-the-united-states/ https://www.pharmapproach.com/top-10-pharmaceutical-companie... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JNJ/johnson-johnson/research-development-expensese https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JNJ/johnson-johnso... https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-10-pharma-rd-budgets-2021 https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-10-pharma-...

cdtwigg 4y ago

Yeah it’s the trials that are really expensive, not the basic research. The government gets to spread its dollars around to lots of individual researchers but if they were instead using that money to fund phase III trials (1) we’d have a lot a lot less money for basic research (2) we’d fund a lot fewer phase III trials so (3) we’d see much less drug development overall. Also I’d worry about a potential conflict of interest if the same government is conducting and evaluating the results of drug trials.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Never mind the fact that 17 billion is on par with the annual R&D spend at one Pharma company. I think a more interesting comparison would be all national funding for drug R&D versus all corporate R&D funding. This could be done on an annual basis or historic. NIH budget was 43 billion in 2021 for all healthcare sectors Top 10 US Drug company[1] R&D budgets [2] were: 1: Johnson & Johnson $15 Billion 2: Pfizer $14 Billion 3: Merck $13 Billion 4: AbbVie $7 Billion 5: Bristol $11 Billion 6: Abbott $3 Billion 7: Amgen $5 Billion 8: Gilead $5 Billion 9: Eli Lilly $7 Billion 10: Biogen 2.5 Billion Total 91+ Billion Keep in mind that those are only US headquartered drug companies, and some of the biggest players like Roche and Novartis are in Europe[3] https://www.pharmapproach.com/top-10-pharmaceutical-companies-in-the-united-states/ https://www.pharmapproach.com/top-10-pharmaceutical-companie... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JNJ/johnson-johnson/research-development-expensese https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JNJ/johnson-johnso... https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-10-pharma-rd-budgets-2021 https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-10-pharma-...