america is so fucking based man

in any proper country that company at least gets forced to pay by the government then ordered to shut down forever due to wanton cruelty. all the employees get generous severance except whoever made that call. depending upon your view of carceral punishment there are a few ways to go with that guy.

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Definitely that insurance was cut. Drug R&D is expensive, and they need to pay people who work and have projects that don’t pan out. But they should be able to spread that cost over everyone in the pool, reducing the cost to everyone to mere dollars or cents. But that requires insurance to actually fucking do their job.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Drug R&D is expensive

      You mean the R&D that the government paid for to take place at a public university, as is the norm? That’s the expense you’re claiming justifies this profiteering?

      Until they start actually paying those subsidies back, that excuse doesn’t explain any of their profiteering.

      • Spyro@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I’m a researcher in the biological sciences at an institute which receives lots of government funding, and was at a university before my current position. We are not being paid to develop drugs. We are being paid to develop new knowledge that hopefully can be useful (in the broad sense of the term). Practically no one I’ve ever met during my time in academia is developing drugs, and the small few that were doing so were only researching a single, small part of a very long, complex process.

        The R&D you are paying for is for us to typically find out that “Protein X interacts with Protein Y and causes Effect Z. When we delete Protein X then Effect Z goes away”. We might also find out that “Molecule Q can block the activity of Protein X, but has a host of issues that make it ineffective when given to Petri dish cells and mice.” This can give you a lead towards making a drug, but what we do is basically discover a possible starting point, nothing more. If someone wants to make a drug from this, they typically will start a company and get venture capital and angel investor money, as university labs are usually poorly equipped financially and talent wise to actually develop a drug (to speak nothing of pushing it through clinical trials). Transforming Molecule Q into a bona fide drug candidate is going to require a massive amount of work that most lay individuals are completely unaware of.

        I’m really curious where this concept that the government is spending tons of money on drug R&D at publicly funded universities is coming from. It sounds great as a talking point, but from my perspective within the system it’s not quite how things work.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          We are not being paid to develop drugs. We are being paid to develop new knowledge that hopefully can be useful

          You know that the R in R&D stands for “research”, right? 🤦

          The R&D you are paying for is for us to typically find out that “Protein X interacts with Protein Y and causes Effect Z. When we delete Protein X then Effect Z goes away”. We might also find out that “Molecule Q can block the activity of Protein X, but has a host of issues that make it ineffective when given to Petri dish cells and mice.”

          Sounds a hell of a lot like that’s the kind of research that’s indispensable when formulating drugs.

          This can give you a lead towards making a drug

          Ya think? 🤦

          but what we do is basically discover a possible starting point, nothing more

          Sounds like you’re doing all of the research and other legwork tbh. That’s hardly just “a starting point”.

          I’m really curious where this concept that the government is spending tons of money on drug R&D at publicly funded universities is coming from

          You mean other than how you just confirmed it while trying to disprove it?

          from my perspective within the system it’s not quite how things work.

          That being the perspective of living proof that you can be intelligent and simultaneously oblivious of the obvious.

          Either way, pharmaceutical companies aren’t spending all their income on R&D. By far the biggest expense is advertising and after that, it’s stockholder dividends of the absolutely obscene profits they’re making on ripping off sick people.

          • monkeyslikebananas2@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Lol the guy said it himself: “I am a researcher” doesn’t understand there is an entire other part called development that also gets government funding. He works in the field and doesn’t realize that the pharmaceuticals companies “developing” drugs also get grants and tax breaks.

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Drug R&D is expensive, but it’s only 21% of the top 15 Pharmaceutical companies’ revenue. And that number is actually misleadingly high because it actually includes some actions that are just meant to help advertise the drugs.

      Source

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 months ago

        I really don’t want to defend pharma but that study is a bit dubious.

        There’s a bunch of issues but the most obvious is simply that a percentage of turnover is meaningless.

        What percentage would be right?

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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            6 months ago

            You’ve missed my point.

            The percentage of total expenditure spent on R&D is not in any way indicative of the cost of R&D compared to the sale price of a given medication.

            Quite simply, maybe the majority of a company’s turnover is manufacturing licensed or generic meds. No R&D required.

            Does the remaining 21% equate to $2m or $2b, and how many new medications did they create with that expenditure?

            • JoBo@feddit.uk
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              6 months ago

              That’s a mind-numbingly obvious point which completely ignores the context, which is Pharma justifying their high prices based on the amount they spend on R&D.

              The rest of the world gets drugs 2-3x cheaper than the US. Do you imagine they’re selling at a loss to everywhere else?

              • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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                6 months ago

                a mind-numbingly obvious point

                Yet completely lost on you ?

                If a company spends $2b on research each year and after 5 years brings a new medication to market which is only useful for 1 person in every billion, how much should that company sell that medication for and how is it relevant that the company “only” spent 21% of it’s revenue on research? That company could still say that the medication is costly due to research costs and the claim would be true.

                I’m not saying pharma companies aren’t shady as fuck, I’m just saying that complaining about the percentage of their revenue spent on research is absurd.

                The rest of the world gets cheaper medications because the medical system in the US is just a mess.

                That said, some medications are still preclusively expensive outside the US “due to research”.

                • JoBo@feddit.uk
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                  6 months ago

                  Good grief. You don’t need to wave your hands so wildly, this is really fucking simple maths. Expenditure which is 21% of the total cannot possibly be the reason why USians pay 2-3 times more than everywhere else for drugs.