This is a brand new treatment. All things that are the product of cutting edge research and are difficult to get to market will be expensive.
I'm taking an orphan drug that was approved in 2002/3 and costs more than this per month and last I checked the company that developed the drug was still in the red.
This idea that drugs should be cheap and accessible the moment they are approved is incompatible with economic reality. You need a system with a profit motive so that many people and investors are motivated to invest their lives, careers and money in that market so we get progress year after year.
This is a trolley car problem. On one track are all the people you can save in the present by making something immediately accessible to all regardless of the economic reality of those that produced the drug. On the other track all the the people that you can save long term by having an economically viable industry that can continue making advances that save lives in perpetuity.
> This idea that drugs should be cheap and accessible the moment they are approved is incompatible with economic reality.
I know that orphan drugs are lifesaving and it is life-and-death for the people who do and don’t receive them, but this is generally not true, including for orphan drugs. I know because I have 2 rare immune mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system and I take an orphan drug (blood product) known as subcutaneous immunoglobulin.
Soliris, one of the world’s most expensive drugs, costing ~$600,000/year in countries with “socialized medicine” is estimated to cost less than 1% of that price to produce, as in less than $6,000/year. This is from industry insiders who have technical experience. Not only that, it is estimated that 80-90% of the work was discovered on public, government funds. See at 11:30
https://youtu.be/0uYCw5EDX8U
I have a background in applied science and I agree that this is the general ballpark case for orphan drugs, based on reading patents.
I'm taking an orphan drug that was approved in 2002/3 and costs more than this per month and last I checked the company that developed the drug was still in the red.
This idea that drugs should be cheap and accessible the moment they are approved is incompatible with economic reality. You need a system with a profit motive so that many people and investors are motivated to invest their lives, careers and money in that market so we get progress year after year.
This is a trolley car problem. On one track are all the people you can save in the present by making something immediately accessible to all regardless of the economic reality of those that produced the drug. On the other track all the the people that you can save long term by having an economically viable industry that can continue making advances that save lives in perpetuity.