birdog1960 Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 (edited) for years, the primary argument put forth by big pharma for high drug costs has been the high cost of developing drugs. this supposedly justifies their extensive patent protections and anti competetive market. this, despite the fact that most drugs developed are "me too" products usually offering little in significant benefit to drugs already in the class. now, there are even less of these being developed and novel class molecules are quite rare. enter the federal gov't npr. big pharma's raison d'etre seems threatened. it's a first small salvo but i find it encouraging. comments? Edited January 24, 2011 by birdog1960 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 comments? !@#$ing idiotic. "The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates." Yeah, a billion federal dollars are going to fix that problem. How about instead streamlining and rationalizing the approval process to bring down costs and make less profitable areas of research more economically practical? Oh, yeah, that's right..."government" and "health care" are immune to basic economics. Or even better: stop pretending that every illness can be cured cheaply by a magic pill. Oh yeah, that's right..."government" and "health care" are immune to reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdog1960 Posted January 25, 2011 Author Share Posted January 25, 2011 !@#$ing idiotic. "The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates." Yeah, a billion federal dollars are going to fix that problem. How about instead streamlining and rationalizing the approval process to bring down costs and make less profitable areas of research more economically practical? Oh, yeah, that's right..."government" and "health care" are immune to basic economics. Or even better: stop pretending that every illness can be cured cheaply by a magic pill. Oh yeah, that's right..."government" and "health care" are immune to reality. i agree that changes should be made to the approval process (the fda requires a complete overhaul with LESS industry input) but i don't think it needs to be more porous. ever heard of avandia, vioxx or redux? how about thalidomide? this is a pilot program. the drug companies aren't doing it so gov't is starting to step in and test the waters. if nothing else it exposes the fallacious argument for high prices that big pharma has sold for most of it's existence. that is good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nanker Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 The FDA wouldn't approve Aspirin today if it were a newly discovered drug. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Ask any venture capitalist what his hit ratio is. It's probably a lot lower than baseball batting averages. That's why you need the high profits from the me too drugs to fund blue sky research of things that never see daylight. To me drug research is very much a serpentine path, and you have to subsidize a lot of failure to get to your hit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdog1960 Posted January 25, 2011 Author Share Posted January 25, 2011 Ask any venture capitalist what his hit ratio is. It's probably a lot lower than baseball batting averages. That's why you need the high profits from the me too drugs to fund blue sky research of things that never see daylight. To me drug research is very much a serpentine path, and you have to subsidize a lot of failure to get to your hit. or move it to the public realm from the private...make it less serpentine. work on novel drugs only and those likely to have the greatest impact on public health. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 (edited) or move it to the public realm from the private...make it less serpentine. work on novel drugs only and those likely to have the greatest impact on public health. Yes the record of ground breaking drugs by the public sector have been breathtaking. You have nearly a century of case studies of comparing privately funded development vs government controlled development. Guess who won? You may not like a world that isn't perfect, but your imperfect world is still better than the alternative you are proposing. Ps how exactly do you make an R&D process that is serpentine by design less serpentine? Research is not a straight line. Edited January 25, 2011 by GG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim in Anchorage Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 !@#$ing idiotic. "The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates." Yeah, a billion federal dollars are going to fix that problem. How about instead streamlining and rationalizing the approval process to bring down costs and make less profitable areas of research more economically practical? Oh, yeah, that's right..."government" and "health care" are immune to basic economics. Or even better: stop pretending that every illness can be cured cheaply by a magic pill. Oh yeah, that's right..."government" and "health care" are immune to reality. Those are not real dollars. They fall from heaven. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wacka Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Those are not real dollars. They fall from heaven. Or Obama's stash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdog1960 Posted January 25, 2011 Author Share Posted January 25, 2011 (edited) Yes the record of ground breaking drugs by the public sector have been breathtaking. You have nearly a century of case studies of comparing privately funded development vs government controlled development. Guess who won? You may not like a world that isn't perfect, but your imperfect world is still better than the alternative you are proposing. Ps how exactly do you make an R&D process that is serpentine by design less serpentine? Research is not a straight line. working on the tenth statin (cholesterol drug) to market because the 1% of market share expected to reult is a billion dollars or so is serpentine. no one needs another statin, especially one inferior to those currently available. but hey maybe they'll get some whore inventor who claims to be a cardiologist (like jarvik) to hawk it and sell it to the unsuspecting sheep. when has government supported r and d into drug development ever been tried on a large scale? it's not like we can't afford to pay the real innovators (chemists. biochemists, molecular biologists and such) competitive wages in gov't. they make less than the sales people with marginal bs's but pretty faces that they send to my office to gladhand. Edited January 25, 2011 by birdog1960 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KD in CA Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 or move it to the public realm from the private...make it less serpentine. work on novel drugs only and those likely to have the greatest impact on public health. Except the decisions about what drugs to pursue won't be based on what has the greatest impact on public health. It'll be based on which drug project is being worked on in Senator X's or Congressman Y's district and which ones can justify the biggest budget. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leh-nerd skin-erd Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 (edited) working on the tenth statin (cholesterol drug) to market because the 1% of market share expected to reult is a billion dollars or so is serpentine. no one needs another statin, especially one inferior to those currently available. but hey maybe they'll get some whore inventor who claims to be a cardiologist (like jarvik) to hawk it and sell it to the unsuspecting sheep. when has government supported r and d into drug development ever been tried on a large scale? it's not like we can't afford to pay the real innovators (chemists. biochemists, molecular biologists and such) competitive wages in gov't. they make less than the sales people with marginal bs's but pretty faces that they send to my office I see your point. Corner the market, eliminate the other players, and demand for the type of workers needed is controlable. Set a reasonable wage scale for the people developing the drugs. If you eliminate the competition in the free market, you could set the avg annual wage scale for, say, a molecular biologist at $35-40k. You want to develop the cure for alzheimers, the taxpayer takes on the financial risk, funding the venture though tax dollars, the innovators collect a nominal salary and have the time to work, think and create. You'd need standardization of the wage scale, probably a tidy pension, and some version of health care to keep the employees happy, but it might work. You could then deliver the completed drug to market at a very low cost, basically shipping and the cost to produce. Edited January 25, 2011 by timmo1805 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 i agree that changes should be made to the approval process (the fda requires a complete overhaul with LESS industry input) but i don't think it needs to be more porous. ever heard of avandia, vioxx or redux? how about thalidomide? this is a pilot program. the drug companies aren't doing it so gov't is starting to step in and test the waters. if nothing else it exposes the fallacious argument for high prices that big pharma has sold for most of it's existence. that is good. And I didn't say "porous", either. It needs to be reformed. Not subsidized. (Never mind the double standard about subsidizing private industry being good in this case...) And don't quote any "vioxx" crap to me. That's a complete bull **** argument, that the drug industry was somehow negligent in that case. working on the tenth statin (cholesterol drug) to market because the 1% of market share expected to reult is a billion dollars or so is serpentine. no one needs another statin, especially one inferior to those currently available. but hey maybe they'll get some whore inventor who claims to be a cardiologist (like jarvik) to hawk it and sell it to the unsuspecting sheep. On the other hand, there's something like eight SSRIs and SRNIs on the market, and all of them have slightly different but vitally important psychopharmocological uses (for example: Prozac is contra-indicated for me, but Effexor might be effective, and Zoloft far more so. Whereas someone with major clinical depression is probably better off on Prozac or Cymbalta, or in some cases Lexapro). Not all drugs are created equal, even within the same class. Even statins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdog1960 Posted January 25, 2011 Author Share Posted January 25, 2011 And I didn't say "porous", either. It needs to be reformed. Not subsidized. (Never mind the double standard about subsidizing private industry being good in this case...) And don't quote any "vioxx" crap to me. That's a complete bull **** argument, that the drug industry was somehow negligent in that case. On the other hand, there's something like eight SSRIs and SRNIs on the market, and all of them have slightly different but vitally important psychopharmocological uses (for example: Prozac is contra-indicated for me, but Effexor might be effective, and Zoloft far more so. Whereas someone with major clinical depression is probably better off on Prozac or Cymbalta, or in some cases Lexapro). Not all drugs are created equal, even within the same class. Even statins. the placebo effect is most evident in psych drugs. double blinded studies have repeatedly shown that in patients presenting with an initial dx of major depression, the prescriber can close his eyes, pull a prescription for one of the ssri's out of a hat and 70% of patients will have a good response. the other 30 % are more problematic but include a significant proportion of those refractory to all available treatments. the major differences between antidepressants are side effects not efficacy. vioxx was a crappy drug released by an irresponsible company. there are many more examples of drugs voluntarily and forcibly removed from the market for safety issues in recent history if you're not convinced about vioxx. timmo, i'm guessing it would take a little more than you surmised to inspire a team of phd research scientists. i was thinking that without marketing costs they might be paid about 2X what the now superfluous drug reps and managers currently make. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
/dev/null Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 the placebo effect is most evident in psych drugs IMO the placebo effect is also quite evident in politics. There's a problem Congress passes a law The President signs the law Problem solved Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GG Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 I see your point. Corner the market, eliminate the other players, and demand for the type of workers needed is controlable. Set a reasonable wage scale for the people developing the drugs. If you eliminate the competition in the free market, you could set the avg annual wage scale for, say, a molecular biologist at $35-40k. You want to develop the cure for alzheimers, the taxpayer takes on the financial risk, funding the venture though tax dollars, the innovators collect a nominal salary and have the time to work, think and create. You'd need standardization of the wage scale, probably a tidy pension, and some version of health care to keep the employees happy, but it might work. You could then deliver the completed drug to market at a very low cost, basically shipping and the cost to produce. This has been tried before most notably by Soviets - do a search on Nizhniy Novgrod. How did that one work out? Really groundbreaking research came out of that regime, didn't it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 the placebo effect is most evident in psych drugs. double blinded studies have repeatedly shown that in patients presenting with an initial dx of major depression, the prescriber can close his eyes, pull a prescription for one of the ssri's out of a hat and 70% of patients will have a good response. the other 30 % are more problematic but include a significant proportion of those refractory to all available treatments. the major differences between antidepressants are side effects not efficacy. No, there are differences in efficacy, and many are contraindicated for specific conditions (like I already mentioned: there are significant differences between Prozac and Zoloft), and they're not just used for depression - also panic disorders, OCD, social disorders, neurological and cognitive disorders... Also, your statement was idiotic on its face - "the major differences are efficacy", but 30% won't respond to a randomly chosen SSRI? That right there is completely contradictory bull ****. Also...don't underestimate how important the side effects are. By your asinine logic, depakote is completely unnecessary since we have lithium...never mind that many people (including myself) are completely intolerant of lithium's side effects. Also...if such drugs were interchangable, then why does it take on average YEARS to establish an effective treatment regimine for a major depressive or bipolar depressive, going through an average of three and five drugs, respectively? vioxx was a crappy drug released by an irresponsible company. there are many more examples of drugs voluntarily and forcibly removed from the market for safety issues in recent history if you're not convinced about vioxx. Nice revisionist history. Vioxx was an excellent drug (that many people were upset to see removed from the market, as they believe the risk of heart problems was more than compensated for by their quailty of life having their arthritis symptoms relieved) created and marketed by a company that not voluntarily only took it upon themselves to study the possible side effects after release, but voluntarily removed the drug from the market based on their own preliminary data even before their study was completed. And the vast majority of drug recalls are due to manufacturing issues or labeling issues, not design issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whateverdude Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 (edited) The politicization of science what a novel idea! It's worked well for global warming and the following: In the totalitarian state of Soviet Union, scientific research was but one of the areas under strict political control. A number of research areas were declared "bourgeois pseudoscience" and forbidden. This has led to significant setbacks for the Soviet science, notably in biology due to ban on genetics (see "Lysenkoism") and in computer science, which drastically influenced the Soviet economy and technology. By the mid-1950s there was a scientific consensus that smoking promotes lung cancer, but the tobacco industry fought the findings, both in the public eye and within the scientific community. Tobacco companies funded think tanks and lobbying groups, started health reassurance campaigns, ran advertisements in medical journals, and researched alternate explanations for lung cancer, such as pollution, asbestos and even pet birds. Denying the case against tobacco was "closed," they called for more research as a tactic to delay regulation the scientific advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science[6][7] which charged the following:"A growing number of scientists, policy makers, and technical specialists both inside and outside the government allege that the current Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy. In addition, these experts contend that irregularities in the appointment of scientific advisors and advisory panels are threatening to upset the legally mandated balance of these bodies." petition, signed on the 18th of February 2004 by more than 9,000 scientists, including 49 Nobel laureates and 63 National Medal of Science recipients,[8] followed the report. The petition stated:"When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front. Furthermore, in advocating policies that are not scientifically sound, the administration has sometimes misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies." Edited January 25, 2011 by whateverdude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KD in CA Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 I see your point. Corner the market, eliminate the other players, and demand for the type of workers needed is controlable. Set a reasonable wage scale for the people developing the drugs. If you eliminate the competition in the free market, you could set the avg annual wage scale for, say, a molecular biologist at $35-40k. You want to develop the cure for alzheimers, the taxpayer takes on the financial risk, funding the venture though tax dollars, the innovators collect a nominal salary and have the time to work, think and create. You'd need standardization of the wage scale, probably a tidy pension, and some version of health care to keep the employees happy, but it might work. You could then deliver the completed drug to market at a very low cost, basically shipping and the cost to produce. And the government labor unions that you no doubt give a free pass to will certainly be on board with that. Holy fantasy land Batman! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 And the government labor unions that you no doubt give a free pass to will certainly be on board with that. Holy fantasy land Batman! Like I said...government and health care aren't governed by economics or common sense, apparently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts