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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

#71

Post by VvR-Ox »

Mirioron wrote: post #49
blackrock wrote: post #32

So there you have it. Late Stage Capitalism Failure. No ability to make a bajillion dollars in rent-seeking profit. So F it! Let the people die.

Well, if capitalism is the problem, then why don't the socialist/communist countries develop the drug instead? Or alternatively, the community could come together and they could work on coming up with the treatment as a group. But we all know that neither of these are likely to happen. Researchers need money to live, labs need money to run.

Because there is no such countries until someone can prove otherwise (which will not happen because they don't exist).

Big capital put this idea inside the heads of many people living in the West and until today they really believe there is countries who are socialist/communist. Neither the GDR nor the UDSSR or China are examples for countries like that and people who know about politics, economy and society know this as a fact.

It is easy for you to criticize all alternatives at once because you have never seen any and chose to believe what the ruling party (=capitalism) makes you believe.

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

#72

Post by lordnacho »

cjfd wrote: post #63
hnzix wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah I've read about this sort of idea as well. I guess it's some sort of auction system where you find the best or most efficient holder of an asset via the scheme you describe. In this world someone could invent a vaccine and offer it up at a price, but if they aren't good at selling it or keeping costs down, someone else could grab the patent from them and do it better.

My main issue with it is risk or noise. It's not clear how we avoid a bunch of over optimistic actors from "winning" the patent based on wrong estimates and then themselves going broke. Sure, if one or two firms get in trouble they can sell the patent, but what stops a succession of overly optimistic people from holding it to the detriment of everyone? The person who bids highest at an auction could well be the person with the most wrong inputs to his model.

Kinda like how there's this one building in my town that several restaurants have tried and failed in, but as a monopoly.

I like the idea for land rights though. Those are not gonna hold back all of society if a bunch of people do badly at it.

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

#73

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

This needs a very diffrent financial construct to encourage research. A sort of lifelong dividend, offered by anyone cured of a potential fatal or permanent disease.

If out of financial range of a individual, bolstered by a insurance or state funds.

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

#74

Post by hobofan »

newyankee wrote: post #52
refurb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Could you give an example of what makes complex biologics difficult, is it the actual process or just the fact that IP is not shared easily and the hurdles to get licensing in place.

A quick google gives you a good rough summary[0]. The quote that summarizes it the best would be:

> for biologics, "the product is the process."

[0]: https://archive.bio.org/articles/how-do-drugs-and-biologics-...

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

#75

Post by hobofan »

H8crilA wrote: post #7
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.

SARS vaccine was abandoned after the epidemic died out because the funding was cut. Pharma is being perfectly rational knowing that in 6 months all of the funding may be cut. What's not rational is cutting funding to supposedly disappeared diseases. They do re-occurr. The Spanish Flu died out at first, only to re-emerge in WW1 trenches and wreck absolute destruction.

> What's not rational is cutting funding to supposedly disappeared diseases. They do re-occurr. The Spanish Flu died out at first, only to re-emerge in WW1 trenches and wreck absolute destruction.

Wouldn't the fact that the disease has disappeared in human populations greatly increase the required funding and limit the effectiveness of the research? The best you could do would be to produce a bandwidth of candidate drugs that can't advance to human trials for ethical reasons.

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

#76

Post by lexs »

jb775 wrote: post #44
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Godwin's law in action, this seems like an incredibly bad faith argument. Why not compare it to the NHS or other nationalised industries instead without going straight to shouting nazi...

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

#77

Post by dntbnmpls »

Mirioron wrote: post #49
blackrock wrote: post #32

So there you have it. Late Stage Capitalism Failure. No ability to make a bajillion dollars in rent-seeking profit. So F it! Let the people die.

Well, if capitalism is the problem, then why don't the socialist/communist countries develop the drug instead? Or alternatively, the community could come together and they could work on coming up with the treatment as a group. But we all know that neither of these are likely to happen. Researchers need money to live, labs need money to run.

> then why don't the socialist/communist countries develop the drug instead?

Because those countries are attacked and undermined relentlessly by a much larger nation(s)?

There isn't a single tool to solve every problem. Sometimes you need capitalism, sometimes you need socialism. Countries that are purely capitalistic or purely socialist have failed miserably. The wealthiest and most successful nations on earth have all employed a mix of socialist and capitalist ideas.

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

#78

Post by empath75 »

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.

This bad flu is going to kill tens of millions of people and wipe out health systems around the world and wreck the world economy. I wish people would stop downplaying it.

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

#79

Post by empath75 »

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/…

> Compare that to the 3110 deaths that have happened in the last 3 or so months for COVID-19. [3]

There were 300 deaths 30 days ago. There will be 30,000 this month. And the month after that?

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

#80

Post by dTal »

cjfd wrote: post #63
hnzix wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would there be lots more innovation with a low tax? In the limit, that's the system we have now (0% patent tax, companies are free to price their patents however they want).
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