4 ms·

The problem with corporate driven drug development is on full display here, they are treating drugs (and by extension, human lives) like investors treat tech st

The problem with corporate driven drug development is on full display here, they are treating drugs (and by extension, human lives) like investors treat tech startups. It really pisses me off when people say that this drives innovation. The majority of corporate research money goes into patent extension methods (like slightly tweaking the delivery method, or slightly tweaking the forumal ala insulin being released as a free medicine, but costing thousands of dollars a month because of "evergreen" patent extension from corporate pharma companies) and on the other hand most novel compounds come from public research paid by taxpayers. Of which is then sold back to us by coporate pharma companies that buy that research. There is an entire established pipeline, these researchers have no other options than to sell their research papers and findings to companies. It is disgusting on every level and indefensible... especially for the country that pays more than any OEC nation for healthcare, and has worse health outcomes than the majority of extremely impoverished "3rd world" countries. It kills millions every year, and is extremely shameful. It is the biggest embarrassment conceivable

llamaimperative 2y ago
You should read more about the journey from novel molecule (basic science, generally publicly funded research) to a commercialized drug. It is obscenely hard, expensive, and risky to get a drug — even one that works really well — to market. It’s much harder when you factor in lack of knowledge ahead of time about which molecules in your portfolio actually work. IMO there should be some structure for taxpayers/grant funding agencies to get paid royalties on successful drug programs, but you wildly wildly misunderstand what the hard parts of drug development are. It’s not publishing papers about molecules that do things in Petri dishes.

llamaimperative 2y ago

You should read more about the journey from novel molecule (basic science, generally publicly funded research) to a commercialized drug. It is obscenely hard, expensive, and risky to get a drug — even one that works really well — to market. It’s much harder when you factor in lack of knowledge ahead of time about which molecules in your portfolio actually work. IMO there should be some structure for taxpayers/grant funding agencies to get paid royalties on successful drug programs, but you wildly wildly misunderstand what the hard parts of drug development are. It’s not publishing papers about molecules that do things in Petri dishes.