4 ms·

Oh wow, I had no idea this happened! And it's actually true? This isn't the typical "we've cured this" then "loljk here's why we haven't cured this" news piece?

refurb 12y ago
Yes it is true. However, it's not like we couldn't cure hepatitis C before, we could, but just not very well. The old regimen was interferon + ribavirin. You had to take it for months and months and the interferon makes you feel like you have the flu (it also put the patient at risk of depression and suicide). The cure rate was ~50%. With the new drugs you don't need to get interferon injections anymore. You just pop one pill a day and 12 weeks later there is a 95%+ likelihood that you've been cured of HCV. It's a HUGE medical advance.
- ohashi 12y ago
  That's quite frankly amazing. I'm really happy to read stuff like this on here.
  - refurb 12y ago
    It is! In the next 10-20 years hepatitis C will likely be eliminated from developed countries. The company who makes the drug is offering it a very low price to developing countries so the impact will be worldwide.
    - kubiiii 12y ago
      Very low price means 2k/person for Egypt. It is immensely expensive for this country and not sustainable for the egyptian healthcare system. But it's the same for developped countries. There is an inherent conflict of interest in producing a cure that heals a chronic disease. You only get the money once. So you'd better get as much as you can.
      - refurb 12y ago
        The number I saw was $300/person.[1] Which was the result of an agreement between the Egyptian gov't and Gilead. I'm sure that's a not insignificant amount of money for Egypt, but it's less than 1% of the price charged in the US. [1]http://www.hepmag.com/articles/egypt_gets_sovaldi_for_cheap_2831_25908.shtml http://www.hepmag.com/articles/egypt_gets_sovaldi_for_cheap_...
      - tanzam75 12y ago
        Why not take a page from the financial industry? Solvadi could be paid for with monthly payments, say, 90% of the average price of conventional Hepatitis C treatment. Once the total payments add up to the price of Solvadi, they stop. The patient gets cured right away. The healthcare system sees a 10% savings instead of a $90,000 bill. Gilead gets a smoothed-out income stream that helps to insulate it from the feast-or-famine cycle. What's more, this places a built-in limit on the price of the drug. If Gilead sets the price too high, then the monthly payments never add up. In a system where the patient could switch insurers, the monthly payments would have to be imposed on the new insurer. Otherwise, we're back to the US game-theory standoff.
        refurb 12y ago
        People are looking at that already, believe it or not. Since it takes a number of years to see the benefit of curing HCV, it makes sense to spread the payments out. The interesting thing is that Sovaldi is not more expensive than earlier therapies (last generation therapies were around $85K). The issue is that Sovaldi is so good that everyone wants to take it now, where before, very few patients were willing to put up with the old therapies.
  - mercutio2 12y ago
    It's really amazing, as Hep C kills more Americans per year than HIV. There's a bit of a dark side, though, in that this miraculous cure's creator was bid up to billions of dollars, and the cure is sold to American health insurance for ~$85k a course, which is out of reach for most people without health insurance. Of course, if you limit the upside on the home runs, you may find yourself with fewer batters in the pharmaceutical industry. I'd personally prefer if governments directly funded research, or even better, offered X-prize style contests, rather than granting patents on drugs. But none of that diminishes what a remarkable advance this is for millions of Americans.
    - afarrell 12y ago
      If there was some way to pick a referee for x-prizes fairly, I would put money behind that.
      - refurb 12y ago
        Not only that, but also a source of funds to pay x-prizes. Gilead will sell close to $10B worth of Sovaldi/Harvoni in 2014 alone. Probably close to $30-50B over their patent lifetime. Considering most pharmaceutical companies have profit margins of ~30%, you'd need an x-prize of $10-$15B to equal their current "prize". The NIH total budget is under $40B.
        mercutio2 12y ago
        If the choices offered to pharmaceutical companies are x prizes or the current patent regime, then sure, you need multi-billion dollar prizes. I'm not convinced patents are a good thing to continue to offer, in which case the option of the 30-50 billion dollar payday won't be available. That would likely mean fewer baldness treatments, which I'm fine with. What's unclear is whether we'd get a more socially optimal investment level for DALY improvements. I tend to think we would.
        refurb 12y ago
        The example I gave was a cure for hepatitis C, not a baldness treatment. What you're suggesting is limiting the upside for investment. How do you think investors (the ones giving money to develop a drug) would react if you told them that the best they can do is a 2x return on their money when before they could get a 5-15x return?

refurb 12y ago

Yes it is true. However, it's not like we couldn't cure hepatitis C before, we could, but just not very well. The old regimen was interferon + ribavirin. You had to take it for months and months and the interferon makes you feel like you have the flu (it also put the patient at risk of depression and suicide). The cure rate was ~50%. With the new drugs you don't need to get interferon injections anymore. You just pop one pill a day and 12 weeks later there is a 95%+ likelihood that you've been cured of HCV. It's a HUGE medical advance.

ohashi 12y ago
That's quite frankly amazing. I'm really happy to read stuff like this on here.
- refurb 12y ago
  It is! In the next 10-20 years hepatitis C will likely be eliminated from developed countries. The company who makes the drug is offering it a very low price to developing countries so the impact will be worldwide.
  - kubiiii 12y ago
    Very low price means 2k/person for Egypt. It is immensely expensive for this country and not sustainable for the egyptian healthcare system. But it's the same for developped countries. There is an inherent conflict of interest in producing a cure that heals a chronic disease. You only get the money once. So you'd better get as much as you can.
    - refurb 12y ago
      The number I saw was $300/person.[1] Which was the result of an agreement between the Egyptian gov't and Gilead. I'm sure that's a not insignificant amount of money for Egypt, but it's less than 1% of the price charged in the US. [1]http://www.hepmag.com/articles/egypt_gets_sovaldi_for_cheap_2831_25908.shtml http://www.hepmag.com/articles/egypt_gets_sovaldi_for_cheap_...
    - tanzam75 12y ago
      Why not take a page from the financial industry? Solvadi could be paid for with monthly payments, say, 90% of the average price of conventional Hepatitis C treatment. Once the total payments add up to the price of Solvadi, they stop. The patient gets cured right away. The healthcare system sees a 10% savings instead of a $90,000 bill. Gilead gets a smoothed-out income stream that helps to insulate it from the feast-or-famine cycle. What's more, this places a built-in limit on the price of the drug. If Gilead sets the price too high, then the monthly payments never add up. In a system where the patient could switch insurers, the monthly payments would have to be imposed on the new insurer. Otherwise, we're back to the US game-theory standoff.
      - refurb 12y ago
        People are looking at that already, believe it or not. Since it takes a number of years to see the benefit of curing HCV, it makes sense to spread the payments out. The interesting thing is that Sovaldi is not more expensive than earlier therapies (last generation therapies were around $85K). The issue is that Sovaldi is so good that everyone wants to take it now, where before, very few patients were willing to put up with the old therapies.
- mercutio2 12y ago
  It's really amazing, as Hep C kills more Americans per year than HIV. There's a bit of a dark side, though, in that this miraculous cure's creator was bid up to billions of dollars, and the cure is sold to American health insurance for ~$85k a course, which is out of reach for most people without health insurance. Of course, if you limit the upside on the home runs, you may find yourself with fewer batters in the pharmaceutical industry. I'd personally prefer if governments directly funded research, or even better, offered X-prize style contests, rather than granting patents on drugs. But none of that diminishes what a remarkable advance this is for millions of Americans.
  - afarrell 12y ago
    If there was some way to pick a referee for x-prizes fairly, I would put money behind that.
    - refurb 12y ago
      Not only that, but also a source of funds to pay x-prizes. Gilead will sell close to $10B worth of Sovaldi/Harvoni in 2014 alone. Probably close to $30-50B over their patent lifetime. Considering most pharmaceutical companies have profit margins of ~30%, you'd need an x-prize of $10-$15B to equal their current "prize". The NIH total budget is under $40B.
      - mercutio2 12y ago
        If the choices offered to pharmaceutical companies are x prizes or the current patent regime, then sure, you need multi-billion dollar prizes. I'm not convinced patents are a good thing to continue to offer, in which case the option of the 30-50 billion dollar payday won't be available. That would likely mean fewer baldness treatments, which I'm fine with. What's unclear is whether we'd get a more socially optimal investment level for DALY improvements. I tend to think we would.
        refurb 12y ago
        The example I gave was a cure for hepatitis C, not a baldness treatment. What you're suggesting is limiting the upside for investment. How do you think investors (the ones giving money to develop a drug) would react if you told them that the best they can do is a 2x return on their money when before they could get a 5-15x return?