3 ms·

I've heard this bunk before, that if it was not for extortionate pricing in the US, medical R&D would grind to a halt. Putting aside for the moment how inflated

I've heard this bunk before, that if it was not for extortionate pricing in the US, medical R&D would grind to a halt. Putting aside for the moment how inflated drug prices are only a small element of US health industry problems, let's re-examine the claim: "If you don't pay my exorbitant fee, I will cut the part of my business that you need most.. but leave other parts alone?" - pharma spends more on marketing than R&D [1], but the propaganda never says "drug marketing is only possible thanks to high US prices", or "dividends", it's always "research". How about this - drug R&D is only possible by high public spending on research, which is only possible because governments save money on healthcare: "Study: Public funding made up 97-99% of the R&D cost of Oxford Astra-Zeneca vaccine" - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/15/oxfordastrazeneca-covid-vaccine-research-was-97-publicly-funded https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/15/oxfordastraz... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...

nradov 2y ago
You're cherry picking a single vaccine and failing to understand how the "D" part of R&D works. The vast majority of drug development expense comes from large scale phase-3 human clinical trials. Those now cost ~$1B each (necessary to establish safety and effectiveness) and many fail. Outside of rare circumstances like a global pandemic there is little political appetite anywhere in the world for widespread public funding of phase-3 trials. It's just never going to happen, and even if it did there's no evidence that government bureaucrats would make good decisions about which trials to fund.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  Are the 9 out of 10 big pharma companies who spend more on marketing than on R&D also "cherry picked"?

nradov 2y ago

You're cherry picking a single vaccine and failing to understand how the "D" part of R&D works. The vast majority of drug development expense comes from large scale phase-3 human clinical trials. Those now cost ~$1B each (necessary to establish safety and effectiveness) and many fail. Outside of rare circumstances like a global pandemic there is little political appetite anywhere in the world for widespread public funding of phase-3 trials. It's just never going to happen, and even if it did there's no evidence that government bureaucrats would make good decisions about which trials to fund.

like_any_other 2y ago
Are the 9 out of 10 big pharma companies who spend more on marketing than on R&D also "cherry picked"?