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With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

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Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#11

Post by _bxg1 »

refurb wrote: post #4

What's needed is a new payment model for anti-infectives. This already happens at a small scale with grants from institutions like BARDA. The DOD of also does this for vaccines for biological weapons like anthrax where there is a high likelihood the drug will never be used, but a vaccine is needed because if there is an outbreak, the consequences are severe. Basically, rather than paying for drugs on a per unit basis…

> Basically, rather than paying for drugs on a per unit basis, you pay a lump sum for access to the drug.

Hmm... a system where uncommon but extreme spikes in the cost of care are artificially distributed so that an entire society can bear them as a group... that sounds oddly familiar...

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#12

Post by JamesBarney »

nostromo wrote: post #2

Perhaps they’re behaving entirely rationally. Infectious diseases do not kill that many people compared to cancer in America. We may have a bad “flu” year this year, with a spike of elderly deaths, but we have a bad cancer year every year.

But we don't really develop "cancer" drugs. We develop a drug that treats certain type of pancreatic cancer that give the individuals another 3-6 months to live. But curing an infectious disease can give someone another 40 years.

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#13

Post by m0zg »

How can you target "new" infectious diseases if they are really "new" every year other than by guessing the right vaccine (as they do e.g. for the flu)? I mean, what worked for SARS won't necessarily work for COVID19, even though it's also a subvariant of SARS. If this is the case, by the time you come up with a drug and take it through all the (extremely costly) stages of testing approval, it'll be too late already, and herd immunity would have obviated the need for what you've just invested billions and countless person-years into.

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#14

Post by csallen »

alephnan wrote: post #6
block_dagger wrote: post #3

With the amount of economic upheaval from the coronavirus scare, I fail to see how there are no prospects for profit.

Creating value is one part, capturing it is another

Not sure why people are downvoting you. It's clearly the case that there are lots of problems you can solve that create value and make/save people money, yet don't result in you capturing any of that money for yourself. For-profit companies mostly ignore those kinds of problems by definition.

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#15

Post by refurb »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
refurb wrote: post #4

What's needed is a new payment model for anti-infectives. This already happens at a small scale with grants from institutions like BARDA. The DOD of also does this for vaccines for biological weapons like anthrax where there is a high likelihood the drug will never be used, but a vaccine is needed because if there is an outbreak, the consequences are severe. Basically, rather than paying for drugs on a per unit basis…

> Great, here is $500M as long as you agree to produce as much drug as needed for free or some nominal cost Why not give $5bn (or whatever the NPV of the drug at a reasonable rate of return might be) in exchange for releasing the drug into the public domain? Then any number of generics manufacturers could be contracted to maintain a stockpile.

Sure you could do that, but manufacturing drugs isn't as simple as hitting a switch - the infrastructure needed along with the scientific expertise is sometimes hard to replicate.

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#16

Post by refurb »

_bxg1 wrote: post #11
refurb wrote: post #4

What's needed is a new payment model for anti-infectives. This already happens at a small scale with grants from institutions like BARDA. The DOD of also does this for vaccines for biological weapons like anthrax where there is a high likelihood the drug will never be used, but a vaccine is needed because if there is an outbreak, the consequences are severe. Basically, rather than paying for drugs on a per unit basis…

> Basically, rather than paying for drugs on a per unit basis, you pay a lump sum for access to the drug. Hmm... a system where uncommon but extreme spikes in the cost of care are artificially distributed so that an entire society can bear them as a group... that sounds oddly familiar...

Artificially distributed? It's no different than paying a drug maker a ton of money to make the drugs and stockpile them.

And at any rate, the alternative is what we have now - no drugs to treat these diseases.

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#17

Post by refurb »

JamesBarney wrote: post #12
nostromo wrote: post #2

Perhaps they’re behaving entirely rationally. Infectious diseases do not kill that many people compared to cancer in America. We may have a bad “flu” year this year, with a spike of elderly deaths, but we have a bad cancer year every year.

But we don't really develop "cancer" drugs. We develop a drug that treats certain type of pancreatic cancer that give the individuals another 3-6 months to live. But curing an infectious disease can give someone another 40 years.

There are several cancer (lymphomas) that were literal death sentences a decade or two ago, but how have a very high cure rate.

It's not fair to say we don't develop cancer drugs because some, very difficult to treat cancers, haven't seen as much progress as others.

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#18

Post by _bxg1 »

refurb wrote: post #16
_bxg1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, rather than paying for drugs on a per unit basis, you pay a lump sum for access to the drug. Hmm... a system where uncommon but extreme spikes in the cost of care are artificially distributed so that an entire society can bear them as a group... that sounds oddly familiar...

Artificially distributed? It's no different than paying a drug maker a ton of money to make the drugs and stockpile them. And at any rate, the alternative is what we have now - no drugs to treat these diseases.

I wasn't using the word "artificial" in a negative sense; I was pointing out that this is a narrow example of socialized healthcare and why it's beneficial.

Re: With no prospects for profits, big pharma neglects new infectious diseases

#19

Post by StanislavPetrov »

nostromo wrote: post #2

Perhaps they’re behaving entirely rationally. Infectious diseases do not kill that many people compared to cancer in America. We may have a bad “flu” year this year, with a spike of elderly deaths, but we have a bad cancer year every year.

Perhaps what's "rational" in a purely economic sense isn't whats best for the nation or for society. In an economic sense, you could make an argument that slavery is "rational" as far as profits for slaveholders are concerned, but we don't allow slavery because its wrong and immoral despite the potential economic benefits to certain vested interests. Similarly, perhaps its time that we as a society reevaluated our reliance on health care delivery systems that base their agenda on outcomes that are economically profitable for them, rather than what is desirable for our society as a whole.
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