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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

#61

Post by jokowueu »

beardedman wrote: post #59

What a pile of sensationalist rubbish. In 2018 we had an estimated 400k people dying of Malaria [1] & around 600k (est.) people dying of cancer in the US alone. [2] Compare that to the 3110 deaths that have happened in the last 3 or so months for COVID-19. [3] I think a little perspective would go a long way here. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/world-m... [2] https://www.cancer.org/research/…

Covid if not put under control will effect every one everywhere (unlike malaria) . Imagine a 1% fatality on the human population but at a repetitive rate .

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

#62

Post by jokowueu »

WalterBright wrote: post #45
refurb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but as a result we don't have problems like thalidomide popping up every decade or so. There are benefits (and drawbacks) to having a much more stringent approval process. And probably worth adding that in public health emergencies, the FDA is more than willing to pull back on regulations in the interest of the public good.

Thalidomide was never approved for use in the US, and the heavy regulation came afterwards.

It's was never approved because of one person that was continually harrased if it wasn't for her it would have been approved . There were only 11 people responsible to review these new drugs . For crying out loud pcp was approved as an analgesic after using it on a few prisoners . FDA's stringent approval process is required

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

#63

Post by cjfd »

hnzix wrote: post #57
_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...

Please put the invisible hands of the market over your ears and wait for the drugs to trickle down. Jokes aside - while people are justifiably pointing out the community healthcare angle, arguably this problem is exacerbated by the American FDA drug approval model, ie no corporation will fund clinical trials unless they're guaranteed a profit monopoly.

Actually, there is a market solution to this problem. I cannot claim to have thought this up, it was discussed in an episode of econtalk. Don't remember the person that was interviewed.

The idea is that big pharma companies have to publicly post a price for each of their patents. If anyone is prepared to pay that price they get the patent for that price. Next there needs to be a tax that is a percentage of the price of the patent. The money that comes from this tax needs to be funneled back into healthcare or even better go straight to the ones who are paying for the particular medicine that the patent protects.

Now the level of innovation can be set by how high the percentage of the tax is. If the tax is very low healthcare will be expensive but there can be lots of innovation. If the tax is high healthcare costs will be low but one can also not expect much innovation.

Of course, there also are some other things that need to be fixed. E.g., doctors should not get all of their schooling financed by pharma companies and so on.

The general idea of such taxes could be applicable to any sort of non-replacable entity, e.g., it could also apply to land. For one thing, this would make feudalism regarding land quite impossible, which would generally be considered a good thing.

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

#64

Post by barry-cotter »

refurb wrote: post #9
WalterBright wrote: post #5

In the 1960s big increases in regulations on new drug development led to big cost increases, and hence less interest in non-blockbuster treatments.

Sure, but as a result we don't have problems like thalidomide popping up every decade or so. There are benefits (and drawbacks) to having a much more stringent approval process. And probably worth adding that in public health emergencies, the FDA is more than willing to pull back on regulations in the interest of the public good.

You can have a stringent safety process without having any efficacy process. The FDA has no incentive to approve drugs but plenty to deny them so delay is the order of the day. Delay in approving new effective drugs costs lives.

The FDA has not shown any willingness to pull back on regulations during the current COVID crisis, nor have they historically shown any such willingness. Politicians have forced them to. They have never shown any organic willingness to relax regulations.

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

#65

Post by VvR-Ox »

1:0 for Capitalism vs. Humanity.

Exactly this is why the motivation to do at least some things should not be bound to earning profit.

There is common goods that we need to share, global issues that need to be addressed together and we need to find ways to achieve this if we want to develop further as a civilization.

Money must not be the sole reason why we do things or we will fail with this "strategy" and we need to come up with good ideas for an alternative and try it.

I know this will probably not make me very popular especially with people living in the US as their minds are constantly being flooded with the idea that everything straying from capitalism is socialism and therefor evil. I will post it nevertheless, down-votes don't hurt and I will write my opinion until it is censored completely.

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

#66

Post by sfifs »

refurb wrote: post #33
markdown wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infrastructure and expertise exists in India, and they'll gladly manufacture drugs at a cost that the developing world can afford.

Depends on the drug. Small molecules, sure? Complex biologics? Even other large pharma companies can have challenges making those.

Indian manufacturers actually make several complex cancer therapies under the new compulsory licensing law that are made to my knowledge nowhere else except the US. The original manufacturer refused to launch in India.

(Source: a colleague from another country where the manufacturer also made the drug unavailable asked to have the drugs procured from India)

Edit: the drug was Nexavar by Bayer. The CEO was quoted as saying "No, because we did not develop this product for the Indian market, let’s be honest. We developed this product for Western patients who can afford this product, quite honestly". Recently it seems the Indian courts also allowed export licenses for the drug to other markets where Bayer similarly refused to launch - sadly after the relative of my colleague passed away - at least partially from the delay in procuring the drug.

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

#67

Post by roenxi »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #19
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 re…

Slavery is economically irrational. The risk of losing a William Deming or a Tim Cook because they were enslaved is far more damaging than the benefits of guaranteed cheap manual labour. We have an economy where a 1 in 100 worker is much more productive than the other 99 if they are allowed to make their own decisions about where they contribute. Funnily enough; the people with moral objections to slavery gained ascendancy at roughly the same time it became economically irrational. And started winning wars against slavery-tolerant societies because slave-based economies couldn't possibly compete with technology and industrial processes in the hands of free people.

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

#68

Post by Broken_Hippo »

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.

We do develop "cancer" drugs to a point. That HPV vaccine is preventing an entire group of cancers!

But cancer itself is... complicated. There are many different types with many different causes that are complicated by many different things. Breast cancer is not the same as skin cancer, and neither of these are lung cancer.

But we do, to an extent, know how to treat things to a point. Sometimes, our best efforts have only resulted in giving folks 3-6 months.

And we do cure or prevent some infectious disease. The plague and leprosy, for example, is curable. We have taken leaps and bounds with HIV/Aids - while we can't really cure it, we can give drugs to folks to stop it from being so infectious. But like cancer, "infectious disease" comes in many forms, some being vastly more complicated to "cure" than others. This is why some things, like the common cold and common influenza do not have cures. These are hard problems. And for lack of better words, we've simply not "unlocked" the secret in ways that would be good year after year.

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

#69

Post by WalterBright »

jokowueu wrote: post #62
WalterBright wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thalidomide was never approved for use in the US, and the heavy regulation came afterwards.

It's was never approved because of one person that was continually harrased if it wasn't for her it would have been approved . There were only 11 people responsible to review these new drugs . For crying out loud pcp was approved as an analgesic after using it on a few prisoners . FDA's stringent approval process is required

> FDA's stringent approval process is required

The downside of that is greatly reduced new drug development due to the expense, much more expensive drugs, and years of delay for the ones that are worked on. If you have a less popular disease, or can't wait years, you're out of luck.

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

#70

Post by Broken_Hippo »

RandomWorker wrote: post #30
m0zg wrote: post #13

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,…

You can monitor existing viruses in wild animal populations and give them treatment before it mutates and goes to humans. This would be relatively cheap compared to solving the problem afterwards. We now know that bats are prime suspects for carriers of these diseases because they them selves don’t get sick much from them, live is close quarters, fly and are mammals.

You'd be wasting money, though, and not necessarily saving money. Most animal diseases do not cross over to humans and IIRC, most of them that have crossed over come from farm animals. More people live in close contact with farm animals than they do things like bats.

This effort would honestly be better spent working on things humans already have.

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