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by moocowduckquack 4626 days ago
"The most hopeful thing I can say, in fact, is that we may naturally be running out of feasible drug candidates, so maybe it doesn’t matter much."

I'd hate to have the mental-state that regarded such a situation as 'the most hopeful thing I can say'. Is almost as though the author has been briefed that higher prices are the aim here.

Also, if you look at research money on the diseases that affect the most people, it is mostly not coming from big-pharma anyway, but rather from state backed research, much of it from the countries that the author reckons are raising US drug prices. Personally, I suspect that the main reason for high drug prices in the US is actually having such a massive army of middlemen who do not have interests aligned with the patient, but that is only a guess.
1 comments
dnautics 4626 days ago
I promise you the level of state-backed research for pharmaceuticals is much higher in the US than it is from "the countries that the author reckons are raising US drug prices." I would, however, be the first to tell you that throwing money at drug development is not a solution to good drug development, and may be counterproductive beyond a certain point.
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moocowduckquack 4626 days ago
Fair. I just had a look at the numbers. Is less clear when you drill down to individual countries and if you only look at the most virulent diseases, also with a lot of the funding, like the global fund for instance, many of the EC countries donate twice, once as part of their EC obligation, and again as a national donation, so you may miss a lot if you just look at EC funds. But you are definitely right overall, the US state spending seems massive in comparison.

Mind you, this got me thinking, if you were going to expect any of that to affect the pricing of essential drugs, you would expect it to push prices down in the US, given there is what amounts to the worlds largest drugs industry subsidy. Also, I notice that big pharma is not generally skint, so if there is a shortage of new drugs (is this actually true in general, or is it just truthiness?), I would agree with you that it is not down to a shortage of money.

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dnautics 4626 days ago
it should have no effect on pricing. Basic capitalism 101: The price of a good is very limitedly affected by what it costs to produce it.
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