Non-profit’s $300 hepatitis C cure as effective as $84k alternative

Re:Non-profit’s $300 hepatitis C cure as effective as $84k a... by yardie on Thursday April 12, 2018 @06:30AM (#16819452)

I’m not buying it. Nothing justifies a 300x markup for drugs. State and federal grants cover most of the research. Drug companies only enter the picture near the late stage and only if it’s a viable project.

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Re:Non-profit’s $300 hepatitis C cure as effective as $84k a... by chimeracoder on Thursday April 12, 2018 @10:01AM (#16820977)

> State and federal grants cover most of the research.

That's straight up not true. Most of the money spent on research is obtained directly through pharmaceutical sales in the US, and a large chunk of the rest is obtained indirectly in the same manner.

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Re:Non-profit’s $300 hepatitis C cure as effective as $84k a... by fricat1ve on Thursday April 12, 2018 @11:52AM (#16822178)

You keep stating this as if it were a fact, but did it occur to you that delineating what research spending in fact contributed is complex?

Medicine is perhaps the industry that most exemplifies one with large confluent streams of money from public, private, and charitable sources involved at different levels of training, research, and practice.

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Re:Non-profit’s $300 hepatitis C cure as effective as $84k a... by chimeracoder on Thursday April 12, 2018 @12:43PM (#16822651)

> You keep stating this as if it were a fact, but did it occur to you that delineating what research spending in fact contributed is complex?

Yes, as someone who's actually done this sort of tracking and research extensively, it has, in fact, occurred to me that it is a complex task.

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