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If this turns out to work as promised, in a idealistic universe, Moderna gets a big influx of money from all countries in the world and they immediately publis
by squarefoot 3y ago
If this turns out to work as promised, in a idealistic universe, Moderna gets a big influx of money from all countries in the world and they immediately publish details and surrender any patent allowing the treatment to be produced worldwide and be affordable for everyone.
- DoubleDerper 3y agoi love this idea. worldbank or imf or gates or thiel foundation compensates the company for opening the patent for the benefit of humanity.
- lawlessone 3y agoimagine the conspiracy theories though... "No you can't just fight cancer this way, that's cheating, drink this completely natural juice made from pulped fruits and vegetables that have been growing separately for 80 million years."
- anonym0us88 3y ago[dead]
- treyd 3y agoWhat incentive do Gates or Thiel have for doing that?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lawlessone 3y agoI could see Gates doing it.
- bawolff 3y agoI imagine an individually customized vaccine would still be expensive even if produced at-cost. Things get cheap when they can be mass produced.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoFrom what they said it doesn't actually need to be individually produced. Rather, there are 34 possible targets, which ones are actually used depends on the patient's cancer. You aim at the targets which the tumor expresses, the others would simply cause side effects for no gain. Thus, instead of custom manufacture your distribution system is 34 separate compounds, the patient receives whatever combination would be best for their tumor. Probably not viable at the ordinary pharmacy level, but viable at the cancer center level or a compounding pharmacy.
- anticensor 3y agoMany dedicated pharmacies (not pharmacy sections in stores) have the necessary equipment for compound medication production.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoaka compounding pharmacies.
- dragonelite 3y agoWe have seen how that went during covid, so dont i wouldn't hold your breath on it. The only hope is competition from China and others initiating a race to the bottom.
- amelius 3y agoMaybe in 30 years when all the patents have expired.
- bawolff 3y agoI mean, it seemed like it worked pretty well with covid. Vaccine was produced very quickly, and in most countries was free.
- noduerme 3y agoNot free enough for anticapitalists!
- satchlj 3y agoIf by "free" you mean that taxpayers payed huge amounts of money then sure...
- maxerickson 3y agoIt was like $30 a dose or less. Super cheap. Egad.
- mb_72 3y agoNot to mention saved significant hospital costs as people were unwell but not sick enough to require more intensive and expensive treatment.
- squarefoot 3y agoWhat is wrong in funding everyone's health through taxes? I paid a lot of them for years, although living a quite healthy life, then one day everything changed, and in just a couple years I had to get covid vaccines, a vertebral stabilization after an accident, then two stents after a heart attack. All for free. So far, my healthcare taxes have been the best possible investment.
- lawlessone 3y agoIt's not a general vaccine , but a tailored one aimed at people being treated for cancers that have a high risk of it coming back. So it's not something that can just be handed out to everyone. I agree though if a general vaccine is created. I'm really looking forward to a future where this and heart disease or just merely annoying.
- kurthr 3y agoIn particular: The vaccine works by instructing the body to make up to 34 “neoantigens.” These are proteins found only on the cancer cells, and Moderna personalizes the vaccine for each recipient so that it carries instructions for the neoantigens on their cancer cells.
- loceng 3y agoAnd let me guess - there's a massive lobbying effort to be able to patent each of these neoantigens, if they're not already getting patents approved for them? Edit: Ah yes, why patent specifics when you can patent the umbrella which is akin to covering all bases - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10055540B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10055540B2/en
- blackbear_ 3y agoVery unlikely, as the majority of those neoantigens are unique to the patient (that's why the vaccine has to be tailored for each of them).
- loceng 3y agoAh yes, why patent specifics when you can patent the umbrella which is akin to covering all bases - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10055540B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10055540B2/en
- blackbear_ 3y ago
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> a big influx of money from all countries We don’t know how valuable this tech is. It could be worth trillions. It could be niche. Risk sharing, not cost, is the currency of deal making. > immediately publish details and surrender any patent mRNA vaccine production methods are tough, e.g. Moderna’s encapsulation technology. Add to that the personalisation required for these treatments, and we’re still far from economies of scale.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago> mRNA vaccine production methods are tough, e.g. Moderna’s encapsulation technology …and were invented with publicly-funded research that they’ve now privatized, resulting in large death tolls from vaccine inequity in poor countries.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> were invented with publicly-funded research that they’ve now privatized, resulting in large death tolls from vaccine inequity in poor countries This is an odd complaint for this circumstance. Those poor countries didn’t materially fund these vaccines’ development. And production was fundamentally constrained; nations entered into bidding wars to secure them. In the end, geopolitics dictated which vaccines—if any—poor people got. Covid vaccines were distributed through non-market channels.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoIt’s not at all odd because we learned the disastrous, widespread international consequences, of privatization of HIV/AIDS treatments in the 90s and 2000s. Treatments were developed with publicly-funded research in rich western countries, hoarded for profit at the cost of mass death in the developing world, which led to increased severity of the disease from unchecked spread, which then spread back into the countries that hoarded them. There is nothing more fundamentally stupid than trying to manage global pandemics with nationalism and IP restrictions in a world with interconnected economies and constant international travel.
- loceng 3y agoFree market would automatically cause a big influx of money. A "big influx of money from all countries in the world" - if from governments themselves and not individual citizens buying - would in fact be a proof point against its claimed effectiveness, if forcing the otherwise free market (via easily-commonly captured political-government-institutional channels) is what's required to drive funding towards it, e.g. regulatory capture to provide profits when they may not actually be deserved-warranted - say by trying to get approval for a fraudulently approved product, e.g. "... the 26 pharmaceutical companies paid some $33 billion in fines during the 13-year period. The top 11 alone accounted for $28.8 billion" - https://www.pharmaceuticalprocessingworld.com/gsk-pfizer-and-jj-among-the-most-fined-drug-companies-according-to-study/ https://www.pharmaceuticalprocessingworld.com/gsk-pfizer-and... And arguably this is just the tip of the iceberg and the industry hasn't been held accountable for most of their fraud since the industrial complex formed. This isn't just a problem with the pharmaceutical industry but with clearly corrupt-captured regulators like the FDA - who allowed this fraud to happen to begin with, missing or not checking into whatever lies were presented for the fraud to occur and the products to make it to market. And that's why headlines like "Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than expected" should be taken with extreme skepticism.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoVery little about medical development is free market. But otherwise, I always agree with people taking a default being skeptical approach to any medical news.
- loceng 3y agoThe current status quo system, sure, but it's passion of scientists, researchers, biologists who inevitably make discoveries - it's the industrial complex and those wanting to control, mainly for profits sake, that has changed the way it worked and solutions were found early on.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]