
Drug makers feel burned by string of vaccine pleas - sigstoat
https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/11/vaccines-drug-makers/
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pazimzadeh
It's almost like government should have a bigger hand in healthcare.

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harryh
The post is an essay about how the government has historically misdirected
private resources by poorly assessing threats in times of crisis. Why does
that make you think that government should be _more_ involved in healthcare?

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xenospn
The government doesn't require a profit before working on a vaccine. The
article clearly states that private companies will not work on new vaccines
unless there's profits to be made.

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RandomGuyDTB
“The only real expertise in the world to make these vaccines in a quantity and
a safety environment is in the private sector,” said Michael Osterholm,
director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy. “If the
private sector isn’t fully engaged and involved, it’s a show stopper.”

That doesn't sound very hard to me. Hire people who have the skills necessary,
pay them a fair wage (lower probably than they'll make in a corporation, but
they'll be working for the people rather than a robber-baron), and let them
make vaccines. Aside from the cost, is it really that difficult to do this?
We've spent much more on war.

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danw1979
I don't know why you got down voted for sharing what sounds like a perfectly
reasonable idea...

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harryh
We have several centuries of evidence that private industry is better at
bringing innovative products to market than centralized governments.

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xenospn
A vaccine or a life-saving medical treatment is not a product in the
traditional sense of the word. You can't comparison shop when you have 2 weeks
to live.

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dragonwriter
It is definitely a product. It's not a commodity, but lots of real products
aren't, despite how the logic of the perfection of markets only works with
commodities (in fact, the goal of everyone starting a business is to make
their products non-commodities.)

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mhb
Venturing a Perspective on the Drug Pricing Debate:
[https://lifescivc.com/2019/12/venturing-a-perspective-on-
the...](https://lifescivc.com/2019/12/venturing-a-perspective-on-the-drug-
pricing-debate/)

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aeturnum
This feels like it raises the question of what kind of drug development
pipeline we want to invest into.

Drug company profits generally come from serving the needs of the well-to-do
in the global north. We will obviously need new vaccines and antibiotics as
time goes on. I wonder if the expensive research infrastructure setup to
target the high-profit drugs is the same as the one we would build to target
vaccines and antibiotics. There's an element of systemic & structural
dissonance here too - if we start dying from drug resistant strains of endemic
diseases, those high profit drugs probably aren't going to keep selling well.

We need to think seriously about how to construct a drug development ecosystem
that balances our needs. I don't think it's as simple as "nationalize the drug
companies" (though I think they are pretty morally bankrupt).

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reaperducer
It would be nice if we could come up with a system that rewards doing the most
good.

The problem is, does "the most good" mean treats the largest number of people,
or treats the most virulent conditions, or something else.

Right now, we're largely using "the most good" to mean "the most good for
shareholders," which is how we ended up with a bunch of different wiener pills
and breast cancer is still a thing.

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JamesBarney
Viagra exists yet breast cancer is still a thing because cancer is way harder
to solve. And there is an enormous amount of money in cancer. Cancer drugs are
some of the most profitable drugs to research right now.

And discovering viagra was a complete accident while trying to develop a pill
for cardiovascular disease.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> Viagra exists yet breast cancer is still a thing because cancer is way
> harder to solve.

I am not sure that breast cancer is a good example. There have been a lot of
exciting advances in breast cancer therapy including therapy that tries to
cure the cancer but still preserves the breast. Five year survival rate is
near 90%.
[https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html](https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html)

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trixie_
If the people want's vaccines, then the government should pay these companies
to develop them. No different than the people/government/military wanting new
planes and paying defense contractors to develop them.

There's a military-industrial complex that isn't perfect, but works. If it's
important enough then there should be a health-industrial complex to develop
the technologies, medicines, treatments, etc.. that would be too
expensive/unprofitable to develop otherwise.

Total privatization is not a good idea, as having companies bid for contracts
at least introduces some competition into the process, and some incentive to
innovate.

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WhompingWindows
One issue is that intellectual property is vastly different in military and
healthcare industries. It'd be a monumental task to re-create an aircraft
carrier or fighter jet in another country, but recreate a drug that's taken
billions to develop? Well that takes a small team of organic chemists and a
small factory in India or elsewhere. Furthermore, vaccines are not typical
drugs, they are one-use only, which is not a good profit-generator...there is
not a good corollary in the military space for one-off vs. chronic drugs.

The comparison of the two industries is a stretch, IMO. Completely different
business models.

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magduf
>It'd be a monumental task to re-create an aircraft carrier or fighter jet in
another country, but recreate a drug that's taken billions to develop? Well
that takes a small team of organic chemists and a small factory in India or
elsewhere.

So what's the problem here? Do you _want_ people in other countries to die of
preventable diseases or something?

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ianlevesque
This is concerning because it is clear that we’ll need more and better
vaccines (and new antibiotics) in the years to come. The impact of every
mosquito borne disease entering and re-entering North America, along with the
already surging cases of tick borne illness means pretty soon the United
States will either be afraid to go outside or considerably worse off than
people even realize. The nCOV outbreak is just the latest in an ongoing string
of pandemics that modern air travel brings along with its benefits.

Renewed funding heavy vaccine and antibiotic development would save millions
in the US and abroad, sooner than we think.

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RobRivera
I strongly agree that this matter really is a matter of funding priorities.
Regardless how it is funded, taxpayer dollars or medical costs, this should be
funded for the benefit of society.

And as far as I can tell, Pharma cos stand to make some solid revenue from
this, so lets get the risk/reward commensurate with the value society gains
from this line of work.

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WhompingWindows
How do you wager Pharma makes good revenue from this? Compared to a
chronically used drug like a statin, they DON'T stand to gain that much. It's
a tragedy of the commons...any one company or nation could invest heavily, but
it's a vaccine...therefore, it'll be widely disseminated once and it'll be
cheap. It won't be taken years on end like a statin: MUCH less revenue; I'm
not sure pharma would be interested without great incentives.

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s1artibartfast
furthermore, I think there is a decent amount of abandoned IP from antibiotic
companies that folded. I don't think anyone has found it viable to even
manufacture them at a profit.

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ufmace
There probably is, but have any of them been approved for commercial sale?
That's the bottleneck that controls the industry. Creating a new antibiotic
that might work is not that expensive, relatively speaking. Neither is
manufacturing at scale. Proving that it's safe and effective to the current
standards is extremely expensive, and risky - you get nothing at all if it
eventually proves not to be effective enough.

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s1artibartfast
There are examples linked elsewhere in this thread of novel antibiotic
companies with FDA approval declaring bankruptcy due to lack of revenue. We
intentionally want to limit the use of novel antibiotics to as few cases as
possible to minimize resistance. Combined with price controls, this kills the
economic viability.

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Spooky23
I actually sympathize with the drug makers here. This type of work is a public
health priority, why not just white-label it and have the government just fund
it?

It's particularly bizarre to me that flu shots just deliver an amazing public
benefit, why charge anything? The government spends a fortune on development
and distribution costs. Why not just pay for the administration, or even
provide incentives to drive more adoption? If you paid a bounty to
CVS/Walgreens/WalMart, they would hand out coupons or free donuts to lure
people in and get much high vaccination rates.

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downrightmike
The government already funds most of the research, the least big pharma can do
is not be greedy for a minute. Salk gave away the polio vaccine in the 1950's
eradicating the disease, missing out on selling it for billions in 1950's
money value.

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mschuster91
Government funds the _foundation_ research, yes. But commercialization,
especially certification, goes into billions of dollars that governments
worldwide have decided that should be taken on by private companies.

What a goddamn waste. I would hope someday all governments pay a fixed share
of national income / national budget to the UN which then centrally funds
vaccine and other pharma (antibiotics!) development and distribution
worldwide...

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g_p
Should probably have (2018) appended to title.

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thewarrior
And so the human race goes extinct because private companies delayed making a
vaccine because it wasn’t profitable enough.

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s1artibartfast
And because taxpayers didn't want to pay for it.

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jeffrallen
Cry me a river.

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s1artibartfast
>The only real expertise in the world to make these vaccines in a quantity and
a safety environment is in the private sector ...

>A number of flu vaccine manufacturers were left on the hook with ordered but
unpaid for vaccine during the mild 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.

Expecting pharma to act as charitable NGOs seems like an unstable solution.
Moreso as the PR vale decreases with public attention span.

Who is working on the vaccines for 2019-ncov?

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RobertRoberts
What happened to the old wisdom "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure?"

We know how many diseases start, why almost no discussion of prevention when
vaccines are brought up as if they are the only way (or even best way) to deal
with diseases?

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> why almost no discussion of prevention when vaccines are brought up as if
> they are the only way (or even best way) to deal with diseases?

I would love to hear your thoughts on how flu or measles can be reliably
prevented on a population basis without the use of vaccines?

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artificialLimbs
For flu: elderberry extract.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190423133644.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190423133644.htm)

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magduf
According to your article, this might help ease the symptoms of the flu. So
it's just as useful in _prevention_ as decongestants, cough drops,
expectorant, and other such drugs: not at all. It just helps you get through
the infection.

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artificialLimbs
Anecdata: I got the flu a couple years ago. I didn't go to the doctor to get
it "officially" confirmed, but I've had the flu many times prior in my life.
It was the flu. I was laying in my bed literally crying, sleeping, sweating,
or some combination of the 3 all day. My wife knew about this property of
elderberry and had already made some extract with the highest grain alcohol
she could get in the store and fresh elderberries from our bushes.

She fed me several spoonfuls through the day. The next day I was working in
the yard. It was by far the shortest episode of the flu I have ever had.

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buboard
I think it's more important to talk about air travel. Not only it's bad for
the planet, it essentially turns every new flu virus to a pandemic. School
holidays, travel, normal holidays/recess, remote work could and should be used
for public health purposes. [Edit: what i'm saying is there should be motives
to limit air travel during flu season, and maybe schools could align holidays
/ recess with flu season]

As for pharma, well they 've contributed to the establishment of the current
model according to which their FDA-approved monopolies are their moneymakers,
everything else is a loss. The solution is to deregulate both ways, shorten or
partially abolish drug patents

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dmitrygr
> Not only it's bad for the planet, it essentially turns every new flu virus
> to a pandemic.

So you want to go back to the days of growing your own tomatoes in your own
garden, and abandon trade and modern technologies?

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buboard
of course not. just realize that it's a disease vector and motivate people to
limit air travel during flu season

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mnm1
They don't want to do this anymore? No problem. We'll just withhold FDA
approval from all their drugs until they do. Problem solved. It's amazing what
you can do when you're not in the pocket of big phrama. We're supposed to
believe these companies that ravage our nation with all sorts of fucked up
drugs (opiates being only one of many) deserve pity or mercy or compassion as
if they were people? Ludicrous. No, they deserve the complete and total
brutality of our nascent authoritarian state. Of course, this is a fantasy and
that authoritarianism will only be used against individuals to protect such
disgusting entities as the pharma companies, but one can always dream.

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champagneben
> We'll just withhold FDA approval from all their drugs until they do.

Do you believe this "we" will include mothers with children dying from
currently incurable cancers?

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mnm1
You think these companies are the only ones that can develop such drugs?

