4 ms·

The shortage is already rather artificial. A snakebite treatment that costs $150k in the USA is just a few hundred dollars in Mexico.

by User23 1y ago

bob_theslob646 1y ago
How is that possible?
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Is your second sentence supposed to be evidence of your first? I'm no fan of a system that prices things differently based on how much the dying person (or their insurance) is likely to be able to pay, but in such a system you've got prices dictated by demand... can you really reason your way from prices back to notions of authentic supply?
- fallingknife 1y ago
  You have to deregulate the supply. Right now you have to be specifically approved to manufacture a drug. This causes monopolies / oligopolies even in non-patented medications. It should be changed to a system where any company who wants can manufacture any drug as long as it meets purity and dosage accuracy standards.
  - os2warpman 1y ago
    >You have to deregulate the supply. We already had that. It was a disaster. For centuries. No. Millennia. Until enough people died to make regulation palatable. Going back to that would be like going back to bloodletting to balance the four humors. "Oh but baby we've changed" --some random private equity sociopath "We've got computers now man that changes things, we'll build an ai-enabled pharma tech stack on the blockchain" --some techbro
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      >For centuries. No. Millennia. We might have had other, confounding factors during that time period. And while he did mention "deregulation", he also indicated that he only wanted partial deregulation... that there would still be some demand for purity/dosage. When people talk about deregulation, there is this idea that regulations already exist. If you're talking about periods from anitquity where no regulations existed at all, this isn't comparable to a period of deregulation where presumably everyone knows what the regulations were trying to accomplish and agree on those and other basic scientific principles. We also had no FAA 10,000 years ago, and no one died in plane crashes then, right? That proves how awesome regulation is in the same way your example proves how awful it is. How can these two arguments reach entirely difference conclusions, do you think? >"Oh but baby we've changed" --some random private equity sociopath Or, just possibly, people come to realize over time that their initial knee-jerk reactions went too far, and cause measurable harm that they want to reduce. Unfettered capitalism does get a few things right... it can go from supply shortages to excess quickly. Let it work.
    - fallingknife 1y ago
      Yes, how could I forget all those people who died from correctly dosed and uncontaminated medications.
      - os2warpman 1y ago
        Thalidomide was both correctly dosed and uncontaminated. Thank god a strong and burdensome FDA existed in the United States, back when men were free and America was great.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    I see, I had assumed that the same party was supplying both sides of the border.
snowwrestler 1y ago
Does it actually cost $150k, or is that just the sticker price? What does United Healthcare pay for a dose? That’s the actual price. Fake price tags are a huge issue in health care policy.
yorwba 1y ago
There's two kinds of shortage here: the availability in principle of an antivenom for a specific snake venom and the availability in practice of a dose of antivenom to treat a specific snake bite. Rich people paying whatever it takes to avoid dying provide a captive market for the first case (at least as far as snakes that rich people often get bitten by are concerned), and protein design tools also aim at this kind of shortage. But as the article points out, most people getting bitten by snakes are affected by the second kind of shortage, because they're too poor to afford several hundred dollars. To address this, the newly-designed antivenom also needs to be cheap enough to manufacture that people actually buy it in large enough volumes that it justifies the initial R&D investment for the manufacturer.
jandrewrogers 1y ago
It is a bit more complicated than that [0]. Most of those costs are not attributable to the antivenom but to other overheads that are part of the process, including litigation costs. The FDA fees per vial alone are a few hundred dollars, even higher than the clinical trial costs. [0] https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(15)00781-0/fulltext https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(15)00781-0/fulltex...

The shortage is already rather artificial. A snakebite treatment that costs $150k in the USA is just a few hundred dollars in Mexico.

by User23 1y ago

The shortage is already rather artificial. A snakebite treatment that costs $150k in the USA is just a few hundred dollars in Mexico.

bob_theslob646 1y ago

How is that possible?

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

Is your second sentence supposed to be evidence of your first? I'm no fan of a system that prices things differently based on how much the dying person (or their insurance) is likely to be able to pay, but in such a system you've got prices dictated by demand... can you really reason your way from prices back to notions of authentic supply?

fallingknife 1y ago
You have to deregulate the supply. Right now you have to be specifically approved to manufacture a drug. This causes monopolies / oligopolies even in non-patented medications. It should be changed to a system where any company who wants can manufacture any drug as long as it meets purity and dosage accuracy standards.
- os2warpman 1y ago
  >You have to deregulate the supply. We already had that. It was a disaster. For centuries. No. Millennia. Until enough people died to make regulation palatable. Going back to that would be like going back to bloodletting to balance the four humors. "Oh but baby we've changed" --some random private equity sociopath "We've got computers now man that changes things, we'll build an ai-enabled pharma tech stack on the blockchain" --some techbro
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    >For centuries. No. Millennia. We might have had other, confounding factors during that time period. And while he did mention "deregulation", he also indicated that he only wanted partial deregulation... that there would still be some demand for purity/dosage. When people talk about deregulation, there is this idea that regulations already exist. If you're talking about periods from anitquity where no regulations existed at all, this isn't comparable to a period of deregulation where presumably everyone knows what the regulations were trying to accomplish and agree on those and other basic scientific principles. We also had no FAA 10,000 years ago, and no one died in plane crashes then, right? That proves how awesome regulation is in the same way your example proves how awful it is. How can these two arguments reach entirely difference conclusions, do you think? >"Oh but baby we've changed" --some random private equity sociopath Or, just possibly, people come to realize over time that their initial knee-jerk reactions went too far, and cause measurable harm that they want to reduce. Unfettered capitalism does get a few things right... it can go from supply shortages to excess quickly. Let it work.
  - fallingknife 1y ago
    Yes, how could I forget all those people who died from correctly dosed and uncontaminated medications.
    - os2warpman 1y ago
      Thalidomide was both correctly dosed and uncontaminated. Thank god a strong and burdensome FDA existed in the United States, back when men were free and America was great.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  I see, I had assumed that the same party was supplying both sides of the border.

snowwrestler 1y ago

Does it actually cost $150k, or is that just the sticker price? What does United Healthcare pay for a dose? That’s the actual price. Fake price tags are a huge issue in health care policy.

yorwba 1y ago

There's two kinds of shortage here: the availability in principle of an antivenom for a specific snake venom and the availability in practice of a dose of antivenom to treat a specific snake bite. Rich people paying whatever it takes to avoid dying provide a captive market for the first case (at least as far as snakes that rich people often get bitten by are concerned), and protein design tools also aim at this kind of shortage. But as the article points out, most people getting bitten by snakes are affected by the second kind of shortage, because they're too poor to afford several hundred dollars. To address this, the newly-designed antivenom also needs to be cheap enough to manufacture that people actually buy it in large enough volumes that it justifies the initial R&D investment for the manufacturer.

jandrewrogers 1y ago

It is a bit more complicated than that [0]. Most of those costs are not attributable to the antivenom but to other overheads that are part of the process, including litigation costs. The FDA fees per vial alone are a few hundred dollars, even higher than the clinical trial costs. [0] https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(15)00781-0/fulltext https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(15)00781-0/fulltex...