5 ms·

Pharmaceuticals is a ridiculous industry, public health and scientific merit are on the lowest rungs of their list of priorities.

by hurin 12y ago

ekianjo 12y ago
To be honest I can't think of many industries which place public health scientific merit at their top priorities either. You could say the same thing about the food and beverages industries, and Soylent too if you care about mentioning stuff that makes HN tick often.
- logn 12y ago
  I can't think of many industries pushing for laws to force you to ingest their product. Eating McDonald's is not a prerequisite for admittance to pre-school.
  - ericd 12y ago
    Are you trying to imply that vaccines being mandatory is the result of lobbying and not just because it's an extremely important tragedy of the commons problem?
    - logn 12y ago
      I'm pointing out that pharma can either be treated like every other company and held to similar standards or they can act like scientists if they want mandated use of their products. And yes, pharma does lobby for laws to mandate vaccinations. edit: obviously lobbying is not 100% responsible for all vaccinations laws, but it's partly so and increasing.
      - jamestnz 12y ago
        Fine, but obviously it's not only the vaccine manufacturers who are pushing for things like mandatory vaccinations for public school enrolment (except where unable, e.g. immunocompromised children unable to tolerate the vaccination itself). It's also, y'know, people with an interest in promoting public health, people who understand the concept of herd immunity, and people who have a reasonably tuned sense of social responsibility. So, sure: Big Bharma employs lobbying as part of their business strategies. This is both unsurprising and irrelevant to the overall societal benefit of high immunisation rates. > edit: obviously lobbying is not 100% responsible for all vaccinations laws, but it's partly so and increasing But how can you tell that the number of vaccination laws passed due to lobbying is increasing? Or possibly you just meant that lobbying dollars are increasing. But higher dollar values alone would tell us nothing about the relative success of that lobbying in getting laws passed. For example, perhaps the laws were going to be passed regardless, and the increased spend is illusory, being attributable to a general trend of increased lobbying spend in US big-business, inflation, or other factors. In an environment where lobbying is the norm, I think gauging the "effectiveness" of lobbying spend, especially for something which lots of people generally seem to support anyway, is a hard problem.
        logn 12y ago
        I don't really disagree with you too much except that lobbying is relevant when considering regulatory capture. And if you want hard numbers to analyze the impact of lobbying, you're not going to get it, because lobbyists have lobbied against transparency laws. Anyhow, the impact is real such as with Merck and Gardasil. Further, it's not only laws that matter but court precedent and CDC policies. But certainly you're right that many unbiased/disinterested people agree with pharma. It's definitely not an issue only related to profits.
        hga 12y ago
        And people freaking old enough to remember when the only vaccination was for smallpox. I just discussed this with my 81 year old father, who along with everyone else stood in line for the first polio vaccinations; that was the big fear for adults who'd survived the other things children are immunized for like measles, e.g. FDR lost almost all the use of his legs from it when he was 39 and counted himself lucky. I myself was born early enough that I got a lot of vaccinations as they first became available, and my parents, my mother a former RN, were very happy about this state of affairs. Seriously, you might as well read Kippling's The Gods of the Copybook Headings in favor as anything else about this rank insanity. As well as gain a much more sympathetic view of the "less enlightened" of the world and history, as we arrogantly view them.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        hga 12y ago
        Fair enough; my comment was intended as an addition to your list of "It's also, y'know, people with an interest in promoting public health, people who understand the concept of herd immunity, and people who have a reasonably tuned sense of social responsibility." with examples in living history. Plus you can't get away from the concept of "good science" and people who don't accept the concept at all in this domain, especially the ones who can be accurately plotted by Whole Foods locations and otherwise claim to respect "science". Let me add that at least in theory, vaccines receive the strictest regulation of all drugs, since the they're given to ostensibly healthy people.
  - kibibu 12y ago
    This is one of those bizarre comments that arise, I think, from a society being halfway between socialism and full-blown privatized capitalism. Consider: Eating McDonalds could certainly be a prerequisite for admittance to McPreSchool, the worlds largest hypothetical private preschool system. Consider also: your government operating as a corporation. Public health is a massive drain on government resources. Vaccines have VERY researched positive impact on public health. If government were a private corp then hell yes they would require vaccinations.
    - logn 12y ago
      > VERY researched Except for double-blind placebo controlled trials, which are apparently unethical. ... in addition to the article here which casts doubt on all drug research.
- hurin 12y ago
  Of course - but the food and beverage industry can't serve you amphetamine-salts in your coke (well not anymore) just because it's profitable. I don't know what soylent is (beyond just searching it in google). Wikipedia says: Soylent is a nutritional drink, intended to cover all human nutritional requirements for an adult so that it may serve as main or sole food There should be a very obvious test for this right? I think a large-scale controlled study would likely show negative effects compared to a randomly sampled population consuming the nutritional equivalent in natural products. This is actually part of the problem - you'll never read about such a study. Why? Because there is no profit incentive for anyone to finance a large-scale study that proves soylent or hypothetical product X to be useless or harmful. If soylent (or company X) finances a study of their product and the results are contrary to their expectations (assuming the researches are honest and do not engage in fraud) - they can simply shelve that material - and if eventually study i++ is successful they can publish that (without ever referencing any number of past unpublished studies). The FDA is wasting my money and yours (if you are a US citizen), in a way that normally should address this imbalance of selective interest in research. That it does not - hardly surprises me.
  - zaroth 12y ago
    Soylent is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. FDA be damned, people are actually allowed, with great level of discretion, to choose what they eat. There are controls on what they can put it in, it must have an accurate ingredient list, a nutritional label, etc., but medicine it is not.
    - kirsebaer 12y ago
      Soylent is intended to prevent malnutrition. It is advertized as fullfilling _all_ of your nutritional needs. (Why would they call it Soylent? The name comes from a sci-fi movie where Soylent is a food made from human corpses. Using that name is an indication that there is a lack of judgement in the Soylent team.)
      - logfromblammo 12y ago

Pharmaceuticals is a ridiculous industry, public health and scientific merit are on the lowest rungs of their list of priorities.

by hurin 12y ago

Pharmaceuticals is a ridiculous industry, public health and scientific merit are on the lowest rungs of their list of priorities.

ekianjo 12y ago

To be honest I can't think of many industries which place public health scientific merit at their top priorities either. You could say the same thing about the food and beverages industries, and Soylent too if you care about mentioning stuff that makes HN tick often.

logn 12y ago
I can't think of many industries pushing for laws to force you to ingest their product. Eating McDonald's is not a prerequisite for admittance to pre-school.
- ericd 12y ago
  Are you trying to imply that vaccines being mandatory is the result of lobbying and not just because it's an extremely important tragedy of the commons problem?
  - logn 12y ago
    I'm pointing out that pharma can either be treated like every other company and held to similar standards or they can act like scientists if they want mandated use of their products. And yes, pharma does lobby for laws to mandate vaccinations. edit: obviously lobbying is not 100% responsible for all vaccinations laws, but it's partly so and increasing.
    - jamestnz 12y ago
      Fine, but obviously it's not only the vaccine manufacturers who are pushing for things like mandatory vaccinations for public school enrolment (except where unable, e.g. immunocompromised children unable to tolerate the vaccination itself). It's also, y'know, people with an interest in promoting public health, people who understand the concept of herd immunity, and people who have a reasonably tuned sense of social responsibility. So, sure: Big Bharma employs lobbying as part of their business strategies. This is both unsurprising and irrelevant to the overall societal benefit of high immunisation rates. > edit: obviously lobbying is not 100% responsible for all vaccinations laws, but it's partly so and increasing But how can you tell that the number of vaccination laws passed due to lobbying is increasing? Or possibly you just meant that lobbying dollars are increasing. But higher dollar values alone would tell us nothing about the relative success of that lobbying in getting laws passed. For example, perhaps the laws were going to be passed regardless, and the increased spend is illusory, being attributable to a general trend of increased lobbying spend in US big-business, inflation, or other factors. In an environment where lobbying is the norm, I think gauging the "effectiveness" of lobbying spend, especially for something which lots of people generally seem to support anyway, is a hard problem.
      - logn 12y ago
        I don't really disagree with you too much except that lobbying is relevant when considering regulatory capture. And if you want hard numbers to analyze the impact of lobbying, you're not going to get it, because lobbyists have lobbied against transparency laws. Anyhow, the impact is real such as with Merck and Gardasil. Further, it's not only laws that matter but court precedent and CDC policies. But certainly you're right that many unbiased/disinterested people agree with pharma. It's definitely not an issue only related to profits.
      - hga 12y ago
        And people freaking old enough to remember when the only vaccination was for smallpox. I just discussed this with my 81 year old father, who along with everyone else stood in line for the first polio vaccinations; that was the big fear for adults who'd survived the other things children are immunized for like measles, e.g. FDR lost almost all the use of his legs from it when he was 39 and counted himself lucky. I myself was born early enough that I got a lot of vaccinations as they first became available, and my parents, my mother a former RN, were very happy about this state of affairs. Seriously, you might as well read Kippling's The Gods of the Copybook Headings in favor as anything else about this rank insanity. As well as gain a much more sympathetic view of the "less enlightened" of the world and history, as we arrogantly view them.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        hga 12y ago
        Fair enough; my comment was intended as an addition to your list of "It's also, y'know, people with an interest in promoting public health, people who understand the concept of herd immunity, and people who have a reasonably tuned sense of social responsibility." with examples in living history. Plus you can't get away from the concept of "good science" and people who don't accept the concept at all in this domain, especially the ones who can be accurately plotted by Whole Foods locations and otherwise claim to respect "science". Let me add that at least in theory, vaccines receive the strictest regulation of all drugs, since the they're given to ostensibly healthy people.
- kibibu 12y ago
  This is one of those bizarre comments that arise, I think, from a society being halfway between socialism and full-blown privatized capitalism. Consider: Eating McDonalds could certainly be a prerequisite for admittance to McPreSchool, the worlds largest hypothetical private preschool system. Consider also: your government operating as a corporation. Public health is a massive drain on government resources. Vaccines have VERY researched positive impact on public health. If government were a private corp then hell yes they would require vaccinations.
  - logn 12y ago
    > VERY researched Except for double-blind placebo controlled trials, which are apparently unethical. ... in addition to the article here which casts doubt on all drug research.
hurin 12y ago
Of course - but the food and beverage industry can't serve you amphetamine-salts in your coke (well not anymore) just because it's profitable. I don't know what soylent is (beyond just searching it in google). Wikipedia says: Soylent is a nutritional drink, intended to cover all human nutritional requirements for an adult so that it may serve as main or sole food There should be a very obvious test for this right? I think a large-scale controlled study would likely show negative effects compared to a randomly sampled population consuming the nutritional equivalent in natural products. This is actually part of the problem - you'll never read about such a study. Why? Because there is no profit incentive for anyone to finance a large-scale study that proves soylent or hypothetical product X to be useless or harmful. If soylent (or company X) finances a study of their product and the results are contrary to their expectations (assuming the researches are honest and do not engage in fraud) - they can simply shelve that material - and if eventually study i++ is successful they can publish that (without ever referencing any number of past unpublished studies). The FDA is wasting my money and yours (if you are a US citizen), in a way that normally should address this imbalance of selective interest in research. That it does not - hardly surprises me.
- zaroth 12y ago
  Soylent is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. FDA be damned, people are actually allowed, with great level of discretion, to choose what they eat. There are controls on what they can put it in, it must have an accurate ingredient list, a nutritional label, etc., but medicine it is not.
  - kirsebaer 12y ago
    Soylent is intended to prevent malnutrition. It is advertized as fullfilling _all_ of your nutritional needs. (Why would they call it Soylent? The name comes from a sci-fi movie where Soylent is a food made from human corpses. Using that name is an indication that there is a lack of judgement in the Soylent team.)
    - logfromblammo 12y ago