Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices
by taki1 on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @05:37AM
(#9651478)
no patents, but also no regulation. Now, this is what gave us antibiotics and aspirin. The current over-regulated system can give us only stagnation.
Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices
by gus_massa on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:39AM
(#9651846)
It also gave us a lot of snake oil, the list is too long. Let's choose one: Pearl power ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_powder )
> In medieval Europe, pearl powder was widely perceived to have therapeutic qualities. It was used to treat the insanity of Charles VI of France (1368-1422), and the fever of which Lorenzo de Medici died in 1492.
Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices
by HarryHirsch on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:10AM
(#9651753)
It is not clear that the FDA has anything to do with the pharma crisis. In fact, since the pharmco crisis began in the late 1990s and the FDA was founded in 1963, the two are completely unrelated. Since closely held pharmaceutical companies are doing better than public ones I'd point the finger at Wall Street, but that would be oversimplifying a complicated problem.
Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices
by bayesianhorse on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:20AM
(#9651788)
I think that "big pharma" companies act a lot like banks, and small companies act a lot like venture-capital backed startups.
Incidentally, both mechanisms allow spending a couple of hundred millions (or even billions) of Dollars for a potentially even bigger profit.
A third way is government financed research, which may be a competitive option in some cases.
Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices
by Shivetya on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @05:41AM
(#9651496)
the cost of pharma is directly related to the costs of failure and the legal system. Failure from the R&D spent on so many solutions that never make it to market and the legal system from the ease of suing for complications or misuse.
What I see as the main structural problem is the offer of pretty much blanket protection from the market that the people/govt give to the pharma companies. Many shills continue to argue that this is necessary for pharma to make progress.
The problem is that this entirely quantitative question: how much protection should pharma companies receive that would still not get in the way of real progress?) is given a blanket answer by fiat. No one knows the answer to this quantitative question, and neither is that dollar amount a constant of nature. Any mechanism addressing this problem should have a fast feedback loop.
Rather than subverting the market, one should actively create an efficient one where the people/govt and the pharma companies negotiate the level of protection that they can both agree on. Patents are a mechanism that largely nukes this negotiation in completely favor of the pharma companies.
A parting thought borrowed from Upton Sinclair : if the justification for patent protection are high dev costs, it only ensures that the dev costs will be kept high to enjoy the (dis-proportionate) protection.