“They have to be kidding now. From the Washington Post:
‘President Trump said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone for more than an hour Friday about topics including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation but that he did not confront Putin about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the two leaders devoted only a brief part of their conversation to what Trump characterized as a finding of “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia.
“I sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and ended up as a mouse,” Trump said. Pressed by a reporter on whether he had confronted Putin on Russian interference in the election, Trump said: “We didn’t discuss that.”’
All “checking in with the home office” japery aside, the President* of the United States was on the line with the Russian president whose people ratfcked the 2016 presidential election and already may have started ratfcking the next one, and neither of those events even came up? This is like JFK’s getting on the teletype with Khrushchev in October of 1962 and discussing the weather in Havana. ”
It just occurred to me that if every new drug — like Gilead’s Harvoni — could wipe out the disease it was meant to treat in only one year — in Harvoni’s case, Hepatitis C — but we let pay-or-die pricing (that means extortionate) keep the drug out of almost all users’ hands for twenty years — then, finally, at long least (!) — most people might catch on to how totally flawed our drug patent system is.
[ cut-and-paste]
If India and or China (not a compulsory licensing issuer) or any group of countries would like to break American drug monopolies they can simply offer the American public the medicine to wipe out Hep C in a single stroke for a miserly $1 billion (earning themselves a nice hundreds of millions manufacturing profit, assuming similar production costs) — but US drug patent laws would have to double-reverse their incentives to make it legal to accept the $299 billion saving, and miss out on the years of needlessly spreading disease.
[snip]
When I was a kid in New York, in the 1950s, when there were only a few channels on TV (no recording), there used to be 5:30 AM shows for farmers where the latest government researched and developed plant seeds and farm animal species were reported. Nobody among mostly conservative leaning farmers worried for one second about the research done by “the government.”
Just as the true, classic Austrian conservative economists did not see any moral hazard whatsoever in free medical care or education — the very same classic conservatives would surel not be the least ideologically opposed to government sponsored research where the end objective was health not economic gain.
What I am trying to say above is: Should we really let a disease spread and kill half a million people outright over 20 years of patent rundown — in order fill Gilead’s coffers for researching the next big discovery? :-O
Which profits Gilead won’t put into research anyway — the big hits are supposed to incentivize other investors to fund the big payoff (they hope) gambles — that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Which makes the whole bleeding the medicinal market for all it will bear for 20 years thing sound all that more crackpot to me.
You don’t have to focus on single bugs like Hep-C. There’s a much bigger broader threat close at hand: The near term emergence of antibiotic/antifungal resistance across a wide spectrum of now-manageable infections.
Iirc there was a good PBS documentary on this a few years back that explained how we got here: It turns out R&D on general purpose antibiotics is horribly unprofitable and expensive. A key problem is that the more a new antibiotic is used, the quicker resistance develops. You end up spending a lot of money to develop a drug that you hope is used in limited ways to limit the ability of pathogens to develop resistance. So most of big pharma has abandoned it.
Even people my age (I’m 58) may live to see a day when routine antibiotics are largely useless and a return to an era where people die from infections in childbirth or paper cuts.
Not easy to see a free market solution to this genuine human danger/risk. Kind of like climate change in that way I guess.
Amateur Socialist,
The thing is that having the direction of scientific research being guided by business folks looking for a good gamble leads to multiplying copy cat drugs, critical needs neglected if they don’t look like they will pay off big, and lack of access to the drugs once they are developed for decades: a dopier system could not be deliberately designed.
Scientists did not get into science because they wanted to do well on Wall Street. They got into science because they are profoundly interested in science. 300,000 government grants out there now — 25-40% of pharma research already paid by government. What are we waiting for to switch over to 100%?
The main issue with Hep C was shortage of donor livers!
I lost my brother in Feb 2018 complications from a late to need liver transplant. I was deemed too old to give half of mine. He had to wait on the list.
He had Hep C from an infant transfusion in 1953, saved his life he was 3rd pregnancy Mom was RH neg, I was first child I am RH pos……
His Hep c was a very slow strain in the transfused blood. He was diagnosed in an insurance physical about 25 years ago.
He had Salvadi a few years ago when it first came out. It did not kick the strain, a second regimen of Harvoni did the job we assumed.
His scarring was too extensive and his liver did not regenerate.
The two effective drugs are not 20 years old, my brother had good insurance and he had family that could have help financially. He was treated by NYC MD’s the whole time.
About 15 years ago he tried an experimental drug which had side effects and was not effective.
The price for Hep C drugs in the US is amazingly high!
ilsm,
Harvoni costs something like $200 a complete treatment to manufacture — and could have wiped Hep C out in the US in the first year it was available — if the price had not been $100,000 a treatment.
I was trying to equate this to a make-believe system where Harvoni’s manufacturer, Gilead, was allowed to stretch it’s monopoly pricing out for 20 years but had to invest all the profits in researching new drugs — same effect as the monopoly system we have now. Don’t cure a disease for 20 years (20,000 dead a year/400,000 over ten years, many more impaired) while we save up money for research. Pretty crazy, right? But, that is what we do essentially.
I have to finish it; but, you are correct. “But, that is what we do essentially.” 80% is margin, 12% is distribution, 5% is manufacturing and the rest R&D. Another week, I should be done.
There is only one possible explanation for this:
“They have to be kidding now. From the Washington Post:
‘President Trump said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone for more than an hour Friday about topics including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation but that he did not confront Putin about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the two leaders devoted only a brief part of their conversation to what Trump characterized as a finding of “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia.
“I sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and ended up as a mouse,” Trump said. Pressed by a reporter on whether he had confronted Putin on Russian interference in the election, Trump said: “We didn’t discuss that.”’
All “checking in with the home office” japery aside, the President* of the United States was on the line with the Russian president whose people ratfcked the 2016 presidential election and already may have started ratfcking the next one, and neither of those events even came up? This is like JFK’s getting on the teletype with Khrushchev in October of 1962 and discussing the weather in Havana. ”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27359285/president-trump-vladimir-putin-phone-call-mueller-report/
He needed and wanted russians working for him in 2016, and he needs and wants the russians working for him in 2020.
The GOP is now totally evil.
It just occurred to me that if every new drug — like Gilead’s Harvoni — could wipe out the disease it was meant to treat in only one year — in Harvoni’s case, Hepatitis C — but we let pay-or-die pricing (that means extortionate) keep the drug out of almost all users’ hands for twenty years — then, finally, at long least (!) — most people might catch on to how totally flawed our drug patent system is.
[ cut-and-paste]
If India and or China (not a compulsory licensing issuer) or any group of countries would like to break American drug monopolies they can simply offer the American public the medicine to wipe out Hep C in a single stroke for a miserly $1 billion (earning themselves a nice hundreds of millions manufacturing profit, assuming similar production costs) — but US drug patent laws would have to double-reverse their incentives to make it legal to accept the $299 billion saving, and miss out on the years of needlessly spreading disease.
[snip]
When I was a kid in New York, in the 1950s, when there were only a few channels on TV (no recording), there used to be 5:30 AM shows for farmers where the latest government researched and developed plant seeds and farm animal species were reported. Nobody among mostly conservative leaning farmers worried for one second about the research done by “the government.”
Just as the true, classic Austrian conservative economists did not see any moral hazard whatsoever in free medical care or education — the very same classic conservatives would surel not be the least ideologically opposed to government sponsored research where the end objective was health not economic gain.
What I am trying to say above is: Should we really let a disease spread and kill half a million people outright over 20 years of patent rundown — in order fill Gilead’s coffers for researching the next big discovery? :-O
Which profits Gilead won’t put into research anyway — the big hits are supposed to incentivize other investors to fund the big payoff (they hope) gambles — that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Which makes the whole bleeding the medicinal market for all it will bear for 20 years thing sound all that more crackpot to me.
Denis:
You don’t have to focus on single bugs like Hep-C. There’s a much bigger broader threat close at hand: The near term emergence of antibiotic/antifungal resistance across a wide spectrum of now-manageable infections.
Iirc there was a good PBS documentary on this a few years back that explained how we got here: It turns out R&D on general purpose antibiotics is horribly unprofitable and expensive. A key problem is that the more a new antibiotic is used, the quicker resistance develops. You end up spending a lot of money to develop a drug that you hope is used in limited ways to limit the ability of pathogens to develop resistance. So most of big pharma has abandoned it.
Even people my age (I’m 58) may live to see a day when routine antibiotics are largely useless and a return to an era where people die from infections in childbirth or paper cuts.
Not easy to see a free market solution to this genuine human danger/risk. Kind of like climate change in that way I guess.
Amateur Socialist,
The thing is that having the direction of scientific research being guided by business folks looking for a good gamble leads to multiplying copy cat drugs, critical needs neglected if they don’t look like they will pay off big, and lack of access to the drugs once they are developed for decades: a dopier system could not be deliberately designed.
Scientists did not get into science because they wanted to do well on Wall Street. They got into science because they are profoundly interested in science. 300,000 government grants out there now — 25-40% of pharma research already paid by government. What are we waiting for to switch over to 100%?
Denis Drew,
The main issue with Hep C was shortage of donor livers!
I lost my brother in Feb 2018 complications from a late to need liver transplant. I was deemed too old to give half of mine. He had to wait on the list.
He had Hep C from an infant transfusion in 1953, saved his life he was 3rd pregnancy Mom was RH neg, I was first child I am RH pos……
His Hep c was a very slow strain in the transfused blood. He was diagnosed in an insurance physical about 25 years ago.
He had Salvadi a few years ago when it first came out. It did not kick the strain, a second regimen of Harvoni did the job we assumed.
His scarring was too extensive and his liver did not regenerate.
The two effective drugs are not 20 years old, my brother had good insurance and he had family that could have help financially. He was treated by NYC MD’s the whole time.
About 15 years ago he tried an experimental drug which had side effects and was not effective.
The price for Hep C drugs in the US is amazingly high!
But effective drugs are fairly new.
ilsm,
Harvoni costs something like $200 a complete treatment to manufacture — and could have wiped Hep C out in the US in the first year it was available — if the price had not been $100,000 a treatment.
I was trying to equate this to a make-believe system where Harvoni’s manufacturer, Gilead, was allowed to stretch it’s monopoly pricing out for 20 years but had to invest all the profits in researching new drugs — same effect as the monopoly system we have now. Don’t cure a disease for 20 years (20,000 dead a year/400,000 over ten years, many more impaired) while we save up money for research. Pretty crazy, right? But, that is what we do essentially.
Denis:
I have to finish it; but, you are correct. “But, that is what we do essentially.” 80% is margin, 12% is distribution, 5% is manufacturing and the rest R&D. Another week, I should be done.