Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

Post by Bartweiss » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #310

Bartweiss wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, the headline here oversells the actual content. Goldman is rightly pointing out that gene therapy cures require heavy research but don't provide long term revenue streams. It doesn't claim that they shouldn't be pursued, or that people should be kept sick. It doesn't even say gene therapy companies offering cures are bad investments! Rather, it points out that they offer high returns over limited durations,…

In fact, this is a really common thing we see in the market/government dichotomy: the market doesn't, and shouldn't, have a stomach for long term, high risk plays that could possibly benefit all of society. That's not the point. The government handles those levels of investments on a much longer time scale, allowing the market to exploit the technological platforms made by our government. We see this pattern with the…

Post by darawk » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #319

darawk wrote: post #278

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No, because that's an unstable equilibrium. If you are company B, you know you can steal 100% of the business by finding a cure.

Only if cures are equally expensive to develop as ongoing treatments. If cures are substantially more expensive to develop, then the system never gets over the activation energy (or it takes an extremely long time).

Post by salawat » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #320

TeMPOraL wrote: post #93

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I think it's totally ok, and it should be accepted. Public services are meant to be cost centers. If they bring in profits, they do so indirectly (e.g. better health of citizens -> better GDP -> more money in taxes). The trick is to still find ways to apply pressure so that a service gets better and more efficient in time, instead of attracting parasites that'll use it as money drain. Like a lot of healthcare-related…

> The trick is to still find ways to apply pressure so that a service gets better and more efficient in time, instead of attracting parasites that'll use it as money drain. A huge part of the problem is the public reaction to how for-profit research is supposed to work. In theory a cure is highly valuable. People should be willing to pay as much for it as the alternative, meaning as much as it would cost for multiple…

Post by darawk » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #327

darawk wrote: post #324

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This may be true, but I think it has more to do with people's willingness to pay more for treatments (over time), than for cures (one time expense). This is an unfortunate irrationality that I think is probably the source of this problem, to the extent that it exists. All else equal, people should be willing to pay a bit more (in terms of lifetime cost) for a cure than a treatment (certainty, finality premium). If th…

> All else equal, people should be willing to pay a bit more (in terms of lifetime cost) for a cure than a treatment (certainty, finality premium). This certainly isn't true in social games. If anything it's the opposite - players will commonly pay more in subscription fees than they would for a total one time unlock of everything, since the immediate short term payment is less.

Post by pygy_ » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

cies wrote: post #114

pygy_ wrote: post #95

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There's a huge mismatch between the interest of the investors (sell as much drugs as possible, for the highest possible price) and those of the consumers (be healthy without depending on external input). The pharma industry should be working hard on planning its own obsolescence. The same dynamic is at work in the food industry, which is responsible for the obesity epidemics. Capitalism as it is practiced right now h…

> The pharma industry should be working hard on planning its own obsolescence. In an ideal word. But as you show in your mismatch "serving shareholder value" is prohibitive to this. So having then as (blue chip) for profit bizes is making sure they will NOT ever be planning they own obsolescence. > The same dynamic is at work in the food industry, which is responsible for the obesity epidemics. ...and high amount of…

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