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A comment on The risk psychology of the anti-vaccine movement. Parent comment

Re:The risk psychology of the anti-vaccine movement by dschobel on Wednesday October 21, 2009 @12:27PM (#894963)
It's really frustrating that we can't get honest numbers on how much it takes to bring a drug to market.

In the anti-pharma camp you see people quote the manufacturing price, and then you get the pharma companies quoting their entire operating budgets.

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Re:The risk psychology of the anti-vaccine movement by protomyth on Wednesday October 21, 2009 @12:55PM (#895040)
I used to work in clinical trials, and while I cannot comment on exact figures, the drug companies pay a lot of money over a very long period to release a drug. The big problem is that they only have 3 to 5 years to make all the money back and get enough of a profit to develop more drugs. Not every clinical trial actually works out, and the courts will be a constant problem for every drug.

Do some research on the financial documents of the companies that do the clinical trials.

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