Why haven't you, personally, dedicated your life to making cancer drugs?
The people that do so would rather like to be compensated for it. You may think it's an imperfect system but until you personally start making cancer drugs for the world for free maybe you should think a little deeper on the subject.
I only regret that I have but one vote to give for bringing this comment out of the gray (apologies to Nathan Hale).
And, I would add: talent, on average, goes where the money is. We've seen it in sports, and it's true in academic pursuits.
Plus, it takes a helluva lot of money to get these drugs to market. Nobody gives that money to a company without a fair shot of getting it back. Hence, for the time being anyway, patents are a requirement in that field.
I would like to discuss this claim that it takes a lot of money to bring a drug to market, and this is why drugs are currently so expensive.
This seems to be common wisdom in this thread, but I note an extreme lack of actually cited sources, so I decided to go dig some up.
I remember reading a book in 2004 discussing what percentage of medical industry profits went towards research and development, verses what percentage went towards marketing. While I cannot recall the title (I have read thousands of books since then), the idea did stick with me, and a bit of quick Googling produced some results:
If you assert that drugs are so expensive because of the cost to develop them, and yet I have demonstrated that the R&D budget is a small percentage of the money which the drug companies are spending, do you withdraw your assertion? Given the aforementioned lack of sources in this thread I somehow doubt it.
Ah: I found a review/summary of the book which originally sparked this comment. It's The Truth About the Drug Companies, and is by Marcia Angell, the first female editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. The review is available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/the-tru...
His numbers don't even pass the sniff test. If you want to find out how much it costs to develop a new drug, there is nothing stopping you from calling a CRO and asking how much they charge for phase III trials (they are all in competition, so they'll freely give you a quote).
The average cost for a phase III trial is approximately $15,000/pt/yr. 1000 patients is a pretty average size trial, so now you are at $15M for one trial and the FDA requires at least two phase III trials.
And that's just the cost of phase III trials which doesn't include: phase I, phase II, manufacturing, regulatory costs, etc. Donald Light's claim that drugs cost $45M to develop is laughable and the could only come from someone with no understanding of drug development.
15000 USD/pt/yr seems to be a cost of phase 3 drug trial in a wealthy (western) nation. there has been a boom in conducting human trials across developing nations , through private contractors. A search for 'drug trials in developing nations' returns millions of links , including reputable sources like bbc and pbs. I will let you pick the best ones :)
per capita income in india is 12000 usd/yr. there is no way, a drug firm will spend 15k usd in a place like that to perform human trials.Do remember that 12000 usd is the average income. the rural poor are some of the poorest in that world. you can safely assume that the cost of a drug trial in countries like india is much much lower. Indian poor have also been a test bed for human clinical trials.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20136654
Drug companies use poor as guinea pigs , marking up the price for wealthy nations and worst of all , prevent life saving care for billions of people. some on whom the drugs were tested on. So, there is more than one reason this victory is sweet for the developing nations.
I am somewhat confused by the term "article you posted" in your comment.
I had believed that I had posted a variety of different articles from several different sources, one of which was written by Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and presumably someone who knows how much a drug costs to develop.
The article I was referring to was the BJM article.
Oh yes, I know all about Marcia Angell. She has been rallying against the pharma industry for over a decade. The link I posted also goes into some of the outrageous things she has said that are completely unsupportable.
Does pharma do bad things? Yes! But claiming there is a pharma conspiracy to drive down "target" cholesterol levels so they can sell more drugs is laughable. It ignores all the scientific evidence (most of it NOT from pharma companies), much of it published in her the journal she works for.
"Marketing" is not just ads. It's important things like talking to doctors and patients about the shortcomings of current drugs and their perception of the relative benefits of potential new drugs. It's analyzing your competitors' pipelines to avoid spending hundreds of millions developing a drug that will be obsolete before it is launched. It's understanding the regulatory environment in dozens of markets and adapting a product and sales strategy for each. And yes, it's communicating to doctors and patients the benefits of your new products.
If these companies could produce more drugs that would help patients and ensure that doctors, hospitals, patients and insurers knew enough about those drugs to spend more money to acquire them by spending less money on marketing, of course they would. So would Toyota, or IBM or any other company with something to sell.
> I remember reading a book in 2004 discussing what percentage of medical industry profits went towards research and development, verses what percentage went towards marketing.
That doesn't even make sense. Neither R&D nor marketing come out of profits. Otherwise they wouldn't be profits...
Ironically, I can't get at that article because of a paywall, but my guess would be that HuffPo is defining "basic research" in a way that excludes most of the R&D spending (which undoubtedly goes to "applied research") and is defining "promotion" in a way that includes not just advertising, but things like the sales network.
You are making a very common mistake, which is to equate the concept of drug development cost with the concept of basic R&D. They are not remotely the same thing; R&D is one of many expenses in the total development cost of a given drug.
I would like to discuss this claim that it takes a lot of money to bring a drug to market, and this is why drugs are currently so expensive.
I never asserted your second clause. Pharma makes a shit-ton of profit, indeed.
I personally am grateful for your research in this comment(+1)- I regret that I don't have the time to have a proper discussion right now. Perhaps someone else could pick it up.
Sorry -- I used your comment as a jumping-off point for this research rather than making my comment a complete reply to yours! I was more talking about the thread in general, where the point is made a few times. For instance, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5472735
Once again my apologies if I seemed to put any words in your mouth. I was looking for the right entrypoint to the thread and must not have selected the perfect one.
Medical patents involve a lot of money invested into making the drug, ex. producing new chemicals, laboratory equipment costs, huge salaries for scientists in R&D, etc. Patents are one of the best ways to "earn back".
Why a cancer drug? Why not? There are lots of companies fighting for this huge market, and if you're the first to have invented a medicine, you would like to be rewarded, isn't it?
Nothing. Its to do with getting back the millions invested in the R&D. Do you even have the slightest idea how much it costs to develop these drugs? Often the rewards for the actual people who do the R&D are pretty poor.
> Often the rewards for the actual people who do the R&D are pretty poor.
It seems to be in line with the this [1] comment but due to completely different reasons. If you have some insight into money allocation in a drug company could give an answer to the linked comment?
1) Be able to pay the best scientists in the world to find ways to extend our lives.
2) To be able to afford to produce the drug so that people can actually benefit from the work of the above mentioned scientists
3) To make enough money to fund research in other areas of medicine
Or put another way, currently no one has found a way for private companies to do cutting edge research, and manufacturing of drugs without having a guaranteed profit stream.
Hmm. Maybe because you've spent many millions of dollars developing it, proving it works to some significant degree, and getting it approved by various government authorities?
because people are disgusting... companies are obsessed with money and they really give a shit if there are hundred of thousands dying because they aren't rich enough for buying their products.
The right to use certain information (aka patents) is more important than human life in our society.
I think the whole evergreening and "patent a trivial change to our drug because the previous patent expiring" thing is wrong, but a company should profit after inventing a life-saving drug.
Look at it this way, if tomorrow a company came out with a complete cure for cancer, and we took away their right to profit from it, yes it'd put cancer victims in a good spot. But it'd screw everyone with a not-yet-cured disease over, when the company can't afford to pay employees, and the medical research industry goes down the drain.
People work for a profit, and that includes medical researches, who go through years of school. You take away that profit motive, they'll have to go do something else to put a roof over their head, and you'll save more lives in the short-term at a very high very long-term expense.
so you see we can do anything we want to ! Its much more related to the "out of the box thinking". If you can't do things you were planning since childhood how are you supposed to be creative and pursue your dreams let alone Change The World!
It goes all along the profit way for buffet. Save TAX , make huge profit , CONTROL (energy, news media, etc) So its not about solar per sè its about profit , most probably Long-Term profit.
When reading your post it reminded of my own "sally". She is straightforward , kind hearted, truthful, caring etc. When we find such a person in our lives , the love that comes out is purely unconditional! We finally realise that no matter what this person says, looks, behaves, what she does or does not, or if the world may come to an end, no matter what we will love with uncondition love. Its a gift (love) to the pure hearted from god himself!
There is increase in poverty for the poor AND increase in wealth for the rich. Now the rich people can get away from any suspicion but the poor can't. New laws like NDAA makes it worse for the common american people. Only american people themselves can solve this by atleast getting aware and fighting for their rights!
