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New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

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Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#231

Post by philwelch »

refurb wrote: post #226
FabHK wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, reportedly US pharmaceuticals spend more money on marketing and promotion (i.e. coddling up to the doctors who prescribe their products) than R&D. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.h...

God I wish this myth would die. First off, that's not sales and marketing expense. It's what accountants called "sales and general administration" which yes, marketing falls into, but so do a number of other items. It's not 100% marketing. Second, the only reason why a company would spend money on promotion is if the return is >100%. So, if drug companies were to stop all promotion, their profit would actually fall,…

> Second, the only reason why a company would spend money on promotion is if the return is >100%. So, if drug companies were to stop all promotion, their profit would actually fall, not go up. So it's not going to reduce the cost of drugs.

Not necessarily. Advertising is often a negative-sum game. To give a simplified, quasi-hypothetical example, if neither Coke nor Pepsi advertised, they would still have very similar market shares and revenues. But then Pepsi realizes they can spend $1MM advertising to swing $1.25MM of revenue from Coke, and Coke spends $1MM to swing $1.25MM revenue back, and now both companies are $1MM in the hole for no gain. In this case, everyone—Coke, Pepsi, and the consumer—is better off if the government just banned soda advertising. Well, maybe not the ad agencies, TV networks, and celebrity sponsors, but there’s still a net economic loss to society.

Lots of drug advertising is of this useless, competitive type. If no one advertised erection drugs, people would just go to the doctor and take whatever was prescribed to them. But if Cialis blankets the airwaves, they can swing market share from Viagra.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#232

Post by philwelch »

bad_user wrote: post #83
jMyles wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People won't become totally sexually irresponsible after the preventive shot, because there are many other hard to cure STDs now, especially as antibiotics are not as potent as they use to be, so i think there is no threat of 1960s style of unprotected sex wave. The way you've phrased this, it sounds like you are casting "other hard to cure STDs" as a protective measure against the "threat of 1960s style of unprote…

> Isn't sexual freedom a goal? You always have the risk of undesired pregnancy and the best cure for that is the condom, since birth control pills are basically hormone bombs, not very healthy for women in the long run, or you could undergo surgery, which is invasive and not without peril. So just use the condom already, those minty ones are actually cool. And if we don't have "sexual freedom" it's probably because t…

> You always have the risk of undesired pregnancy and the best cure for that is the condom, since birth control pills are basically hormone bombs, not very healthy for women in the long run, or you could undergo surgery, which is invasive and not without peril. So just use the condom already, those minty ones are actually cool.

Lots of women, including my wife, are perfectly happy with hormonal birth control. For others, there are lots of other options, and even more in development. It’s a very personal decision, but condoms are by far among the least effective techniques.

> And if we don't have "sexual freedom" it's probably because there are really good reasons for it. We shouldn't dismiss taboos without considering that some of them is why we've survived for so long.

The entire parable of Chesterson’s fence suggests that we shouldn’t get rid of something in society without knowing what function it was serving. It doesn’t suggest never reforming society at all.

The taboo against fornication is obviously there to prevent the spread of disease and unwanted pregnancy. If we have other ways to prevent these side-effects, there is no longer any reason for the taboo; much as the religious taboo of not eating pork or shellfish no longer serve the same useful purpose they did in the ancient Middle East.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#233

Post by yoklov »

refurb wrote: post #146
astura wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more or less true. The pharmacy company Burroughs Wellcome is largely blamed for pathologizing "genital herpes" starting in the late 70s. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ypa8nb/did-big-pharma...

Wait a second. With heroes you get painful, oozing sores on your genitals. It sometimes never goes away and can flare up at any time. Does it really take a company to make people think of it as a disease? "Oh my penis feels like it's on fire and oozing all over me. However, I wouldn't call it a disease."

AIUI it wasn’t considered a disease similar to how cold sores aren’t.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#234

Post by brianwawok »

philwelch wrote: post #231
refurb wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I wish this myth would die. First off, that's not sales and marketing expense. It's what accountants called "sales and general administration" which yes, marketing falls into, but so do a number of other items. It's not 100% marketing. Second, the only reason why a company would spend money on promotion is if the return is >100%. So, if drug companies were to stop all promotion, their profit would actually fall,…

> Second, the only reason why a company would spend money on promotion is if the return is >100%. So, if drug companies were to stop all promotion, their profit would actually fall, not go up. So it's not going to reduce the cost of drugs. Not necessarily. Advertising is often a negative-sum game. To give a simplified, quasi-hypothetical example, if neither Coke nor Pepsi advertised, they would still have very simila…

Except your example doesnt work. If coke and pepsi didn't advertise, more people would drink RC Cola and Faygo and fruit juice. Drinks are not a duopoly.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#235

Post by stun »

nkkollaw wrote: post #196
tertius wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs are cheaper and largely subsidized by governments with high incidence of HIV. *I'm South African, antiretrovirals are free.

Even poorer countries..? South Africa is not exactly was I was referring to. More like Congo, Senegal, etc.

ARVs (antiretrovirals) are free in Uganda. They are also manufactured right there

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#236

Post by 46886532558 »

jondubois wrote: post #198
smitherfield wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the most virulent 1%, it's 1% which have unusual mutations that cause them to be resistant to this treatment, but which usually reduce their fitness in other respects. (This can be seen in humans as well, e.g. malaria resistance->sickle-cell). The fastest-multiplying viruses are also (obviously) going to be the most common, in the absence of treatment.

This is really fascinating how being really good at something often correlates with being less good at other things (in this case antibiotic resistance seems to be inversely proportional to the potency of the bacteria). This is true not just for bacteria but also for other living creatures; for example animals that have lots of children have very short average lifespans. It makes me think that every living species mu…

Natural selection tends to work on traits that are relevant till the ability to reproduce ends. If the trait can dominate by rapid reproduction, life span does not matter and robustness is not selected for. Generally it is not an inherent trade-off between certain traits, apart from energy consumption.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#237

Post by vidarh »

BuckRogers wrote: post #153
noncoml wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am for social pressures against unprotected sex What is this if not trying to make other people live their lives following your way of thinking?

I'm more than willing to bet you are happy to voice your opinion on any given subject, including this one as you try to snuff my viewpoint out with claims about my attempt at oppression. Why can't I add my own opinion and voice? Just because you don't like what I think. This is the same misguided logic you tried to use on bad_user. You really don't get it and honestly I don't care if you ever do or not.

I find you comical that you are for social pressure to avoid behavior you don't like, but are complaining when others apply social pressure.

Free speech does not mean freedom from criticism.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#238

Post by Broken_Hippo »

bad_user wrote: post #83
jMyles wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People won't become totally sexually irresponsible after the preventive shot, because there are many other hard to cure STDs now, especially as antibiotics are not as potent as they use to be, so i think there is no threat of 1960s style of unprotected sex wave. The way you've phrased this, it sounds like you are casting "other hard to cure STDs" as a protective measure against the "threat of 1960s style of unprote…

> Isn't sexual freedom a goal? You always have the risk of undesired pregnancy and the best cure for that is the condom, since birth control pills are basically hormone bombs, not very healthy for women in the long run, or you could undergo surgery, which is invasive and not without peril. So just use the condom already, those minty ones are actually cool. And if we don't have "sexual freedom" it's probably because t…

I'm pretty sure birth control is safer than being pregnant every 10 months. From what I understand, this pregnancy thing is the real reason for the taboo against being sexually active more - that and society's penchant for knowing who to pass on their stuff to after they died. Granted, many of these sorts of taboos have traditionally been only for women and not men, and have not always been consistent over time. Additionally, old-time methods for birth control were bad, and abortion options (they have had them for centuries) were even worse. Pregnant women needed a lot of support as well, so this could lead to some of the taboo.

A condom is not the best option for birth control, merely one of the options. The best would be voluntary sterilization for both the man and the woman. There are other non-hormonal birth control methods, such as a copper IUD and other barrier methods that work, some better than a condom and some worse.

The main benefit from a condom is STD protection, but for that to be effective they need to be readily available to everyone and cheap enough to afford.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#239

Post by tertius »

pkaye wrote: post #223
tertius wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs are cheapest in India. Let's normalize. I.e. far end of the pricing bell curve. But the answer is still, yes, there is profitability. Just not as much as with the hyper inflated prices in the US. In short: Does the extreme cost for drugs in the US cause groundbreaking research to benefit the whole world? No, same results could be had with way less profit. Money to fund moonshot research is still important thoug…

Given the lower labor costs and people consider drugs to be so profitable, I don't know why other countries don't do as much research and drug development. Just a few countries carry the lion share of this effort.

Drug development is expensive.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#240

Post by philwelch »

brianwawok wrote: post #234
philwelch wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, the only reason why a company would spend money on promotion is if the return is >100%. So, if drug companies were to stop all promotion, their profit would actually fall, not go up. So it's not going to reduce the cost of drugs. Not necessarily. Advertising is often a negative-sum game. To give a simplified, quasi-hypothetical example, if neither Coke nor Pepsi advertised, they would still have very simila…

Except your example doesnt work. If coke and pepsi didn't advertise, more people would drink RC Cola and Faygo and fruit juice. Drinks are not a duopoly.

It’s a simplified example, but there is a point where cola-wars advertising turns into a negative sum game while still remaining the optimal strategy for each individual player. Coke and Pepsi can beat the smaller brands through distribution alone anyway.
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