4 ms·

This ignored the fact that the company which develops a successful drug is also developing drugs which will fail. That costs money too, and the successes have

by EpicEng 12y ago

This ignored the fact that the company which develops a successful drug is also developing drugs which will fail. That costs money too, and the successes have to cover the failures. That said... pharma companies are pretty greedy entities. I know a certain ex-pharma rep closely and she's no fan of her former employers. I can dislike the greed, but I can't blame a company for trying to make a profit.

markdown 12y ago
> I can't blame a company for trying to make a profit. 10% is a profit. 50% is a profit. Heck even 100% is an understandable profit. You can and should blame them for screwing humanity over and above what is reasonable.
- viggity 12y ago
  No. What screws humanity over is a system where nobody is incentivized to producing new drugs. If it is so effin' easy, you do it. Go ahead. Raise the hundreds of millions of dollars and promise your investors "you know, we're only going to make twice your money back". Its not that simple. I'd rather have the option and have it be expensive as hell than not having the option at all.
  - anon1385 12y ago
    Research doesn't have to be funded by investors looking for a profit. Lots of medical research is funded by governments and non-profit organisations. For some diseases that is where the vast majority of funding research comes from.
- msandford 12y ago
  My dad has worked on pacemakers, defibrillators, left ventricular assist pumps, all kinds of implantables. In this industry they regularly mark up their manufacturing costs 10x-20x because it takes minimum 5-10 years to get something through the FDA. Even if your design is 100% perfect the first time (which they never are). So a $5mm R&D project turns into a $50mm slog through approval and then you get to sell, what a few tends of thousands of units? Let's just say that you could somehow magically sell 50k units. That means you've got to charge $10k per unit just to cover the engineering & approval and stuff and that's before a DIME of profit. So a pacemaker costs $20k not because it's got $15k of raw materials inside of it but because the FDA says that it has to get approved and approval isn't cheap. I'm sure drugs are the same way. It might cost only a few dollars to actually manufacture the ingredients in a pill but the R&D necessary to know WHAT ingredients might have cost $100mm. So even if you sell a million of them they've got to cost $100 each before you take anything else into account. I am not suggesting that it would be OK for the government to basically just take the patents. But it also wouldn't surprise me if they did.
- refurb 12y ago
  Did you look up what the pharmaceutical industry profit margin is? About 20-30%. Based on that information I'm assuming your OK with the situation now?
- EpicEng 12y ago
  Where are you getting your numbers? You believe that these companies are making in excess of 100% profit? Also, are you not happy that these drugs exist in the first place?
viggity 12y ago
Oh, and you're not greedy? Its always the "other" guy who is greedy. It isn't the benevolence of the butcher, baker or brewer that puts dinner on the table.
- EpicEng 12y ago
  What does that have to do with anything?
  - zo1 12y ago
    I think he was pointing out the double-standard that's implicit in comments such as yours about "Big Pharma". Basically, boiling down to "wanting money for profit" is greedy and evil/bad. But wanting "free money" or benefits/products is not, because well, it's not profit. Egh, don't think I articulated that quite nicely. To me, the distinction is irrelevant. Wanting stuff is natural, whether your needs necessitate it or not.
    - EpicEng 12y ago
      I don't think "wanting money for profit" is "evil/bad", but the pharma industry has in the past done some arguably unethical things in relation to marketing. Anyway, my point was that me being greedy is completely irrelevant. Even if I am, hypocrisy does not make one incorrect, and what does it have to do with the substance of my comment?
msandford 12y ago
Dude read the last line. I explicitly stated precisely that. > I'm not sure it's a good idea because it might well reduce investment in new drugs (developing drugs is like VC, you fail a lot and occasionally hit it out of the park) and that would be a bummer.
- EpicEng 12y ago
  Hmmm... Not sure how I missed that. Sorry. I suppose I read your comment with a bunch of pent up cognitive bias expecting most people to be bashing the pharmaceutical industry. My mistake.

by EpicEng 12y ago

markdown 12y ago

> I can't blame a company for trying to make a profit. 10% is a profit. 50% is a profit. Heck even 100% is an understandable profit. You can and should blame them for screwing humanity over and above what is reasonable.

viggity 12y ago
No. What screws humanity over is a system where nobody is incentivized to producing new drugs. If it is so effin' easy, you do it. Go ahead. Raise the hundreds of millions of dollars and promise your investors "you know, we're only going to make twice your money back". Its not that simple. I'd rather have the option and have it be expensive as hell than not having the option at all.
- anon1385 12y ago
  Research doesn't have to be funded by investors looking for a profit. Lots of medical research is funded by governments and non-profit organisations. For some diseases that is where the vast majority of funding research comes from.
msandford 12y ago
My dad has worked on pacemakers, defibrillators, left ventricular assist pumps, all kinds of implantables. In this industry they regularly mark up their manufacturing costs 10x-20x because it takes minimum 5-10 years to get something through the FDA. Even if your design is 100% perfect the first time (which they never are). So a $5mm R&D project turns into a $50mm slog through approval and then you get to sell, what a few tends of thousands of units? Let's just say that you could somehow magically sell 50k units. That means you've got to charge $10k per unit just to cover the engineering & approval and stuff and that's before a DIME of profit. So a pacemaker costs $20k not because it's got $15k of raw materials inside of it but because the FDA says that it has to get approved and approval isn't cheap. I'm sure drugs are the same way. It might cost only a few dollars to actually manufacture the ingredients in a pill but the R&D necessary to know WHAT ingredients might have cost $100mm. So even if you sell a million of them they've got to cost $100 each before you take anything else into account. I am not suggesting that it would be OK for the government to basically just take the patents. But it also wouldn't surprise me if they did.
refurb 12y ago
Did you look up what the pharmaceutical industry profit margin is? About 20-30%. Based on that information I'm assuming your OK with the situation now?
EpicEng 12y ago
Where are you getting your numbers? You believe that these companies are making in excess of 100% profit? Also, are you not happy that these drugs exist in the first place?

viggity 12y ago

Oh, and you're not greedy? Its always the "other" guy who is greedy. It isn't the benevolence of the butcher, baker or brewer that puts dinner on the table.

EpicEng 12y ago
What does that have to do with anything?
- zo1 12y ago
  I think he was pointing out the double-standard that's implicit in comments such as yours about "Big Pharma". Basically, boiling down to "wanting money for profit" is greedy and evil/bad. But wanting "free money" or benefits/products is not, because well, it's not profit. Egh, don't think I articulated that quite nicely. To me, the distinction is irrelevant. Wanting stuff is natural, whether your needs necessitate it or not.
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    I don't think "wanting money for profit" is "evil/bad", but the pharma industry has in the past done some arguably unethical things in relation to marketing. Anyway, my point was that me being greedy is completely irrelevant. Even if I am, hypocrisy does not make one incorrect, and what does it have to do with the substance of my comment?

msandford 12y ago

Dude read the last line. I explicitly stated precisely that. > I'm not sure it's a good idea because it might well reduce investment in new drugs (developing drugs is like VC, you fail a lot and occasionally hit it out of the park) and that would be a bummer.

EpicEng 12y ago
Hmmm... Not sure how I missed that. Sorry. I suppose I read your comment with a bunch of pent up cognitive bias expecting most people to be bashing the pharmaceutical industry. My mistake.