EPTi just don't find it OK to be charging medical care at $500,000. Obviously, the drug has already been discovered. Now it's the difference of say earning $20k or charging $500k and getting none. Maybe they need to extend patents to cover these rare diseases, so that companies have more incentive to work on rare disease.
Drug Cost A Likely Death Sentence - Page 11
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IzieBoy
United States865 Posts
i just don't find it OK to be charging medical care at $500,000. Obviously, the drug has already been discovered. Now it's the difference of say earning $20k or charging $500k and getting none. Maybe they need to extend patents to cover these rare diseases, so that companies have more incentive to work on rare disease. | ||
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Trentelshark
Canada385 Posts
On June 23 2011 03:07 domovoi wrote: The basic "problem" is that there needs to be a way for companies to recoup their R&D, but we also don't like monopoly pricing. One solution I have seen is to have the government purchase the patent for fair-market value after the pharma company completes all testing. Fair-market value can be calculated by having competing pharma companies bid for the patent, and the government can simply say, "there is a 90% chance we will buy it" in order to incentivize the bidders to do their due diligence. Then the government just releases it into the public domain. The company I work for spends millions on R&D every year and there is a government tax credit for doing so. Doesn't recoup it all, but we certainly don't charge anywhere near what the pharmaseutical does in this story for our product, and the market we are in is not overly populated. At the end of the day these companies do NOT want you to find a solution to common issues (ask my brother who went to Laurentian what they did when the primary professor started experimenting with light waves to beat cancer since cells emit a lightwave and it worked...didn't last long before he was shutdown for "ethical" reasons) such as cancer or disease because they WILL go out of business, lose millions in taxes and people WILL be laid off work. Call it conspiracy, it's the truth. How many billions are donated to say cancer research every year and all they do is feed us a cocktail of god knows what to "treat" it. The whole medical field is a complete joke and it's driven by dollars/people getting sick/people needing treatment, end of story. $500,000 a year cannot be justified, unless that company makes a single drug in which case they need to expand their horizons. It's disgusting. | ||
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Scap
United States60 Posts
On June 22 2011 20:27 xM(Z wrote: how the fuck could developing/reaserching and getting this (and only this) thing approved cost billion of dollars? it only takes like 2-3 people, volunteers and ... time? Even ignoring the entire clinical trial phase, you're entirely neglecting what goes into research. I will admit I don't know everything about medicine and pharmaceutical R&D, but I did work for my medicinal biochemist professor on research (interestingly, for crohn's disease, a relatively rare disease), and a lot of money is required just for: Equipment, reagents and paying the people. And she didn't get the high end equipment either, which reduced our research rate. She had herself and 3 people in a lab, and it was taking FOREVER to get anywhere. She's been at it for several years (at least 7) and has made only a little bit of progress. This is partially because she teaches, but also due to the lack of people available to work. So if you want cures faster, you need more people (arguably, there is a breaking point) and these people need to be paid for their time and expertise. Sometimes, as few as 50g of starting material runs 1000 bucks (or more, these things can be quite expensive), and in high throughput screening just to identify a compound that MIGHT be a LEAD on a drug, you need A LOT of materials. This adds up quickly. And if you want Ph.D's in chemistry and biology, and MD's, to work for free on drug R&D, good luck. While I'm sure most of those people don't dream of glamorous jobs, their extra 5+ years of schooling should demand reasonable compensation for their time and expertise. If you have 10 Ph.D's that can run you probably 1 million a year. Before any equipment or reagent costs, and these things take YEARS of R&D to get through. Then there's setting up the trials and everything else associated with it, I can see why it can cost up to a billion or more. On topic: While up there I appear all pro-Pharma, I'm not HAPPY about the fate of the OP's friend. It's just an unfortunate reality when dealing with rare diseases and the cost of drug R&D. On one hand, the sick person cannot afford treatment, on the other, many people's livelihood depend upon a company's ability to pull a profit. It's hard to just sit and say one is more important than the other, in my mind. | ||
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Probulous
Australia3894 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:08 IzieBoy wrote: $28 million seems about right as an estimate. clinical trials consume a lot of cash. i just don't find it OK to be charging medical care at $500,000. Obviously, the drug has already been discovered. Now it's the difference of say earning $20k or charging $500k and getting none. Maybe they need to extend patents to cover these rare diseases, so that companies have more incentive to work on rare disease. But your logic is faulty. Companies don't get paid until the drug is on sale. Just because it has been discovered doesn't mean the discovery costs can be ignored. Companies don't earn their revenue through individual patients paying. They earn it through Hospitals, Insurance Companies and governments subsidising patient payments. If they openly charge patients 20K, the other payers have every right to question why the company charges them more. This is why most companies have a compassionate program. As soon as they set a lower price to anyone then everyone will expect that or lower. As for patents, they do cover specific rare diseases. I guess what you mean is they should be longer, allowing companies to earn more long term. This is a possibility, which might work. I should note companies are targeting rare conditions more and more, simply because they are often simpler to cure. Gleevec(US, Glivec elsewhere) was the first real rare disease blockbuster and made money because it cured the disease. | ||
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Ryuu314
United States12679 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:00 Probulous wrote: Calm down people, there is no need to get hysterical. You can't discuss with someone if they are shouting at you. There seems to be a lot of meaningless platitudes in this thread, which is a disservice the OP. So here are some points to consider. If you don't like them or have a counter argument please use some facts and figures so the discussion moves on. Is developing a drug expensive? This is a complicated question because the price is determined by many factors. Mostly it is due to the following:
In 2006 the Clinical Trial Benchmarking put average per patient costs for clinical trials at $26,000.00 USD ( http://www.lifesciencesworld.com/news/view/11080 ) The number of patients required per trial depends on the expected benefit as well as expected toxicity profile, however most registration trials have a minimum of 500 patients. Thus we can expect using rough estimates that each registration trial would cost approximately $26,000 x 1000 = $26,000,000 That is a big number. Even if my number estimates are high (I can tell you they are an underestimate), you are still looking at millions of dollars per trial. Now this is only the successful final phase III trial. There are also the previous Phase I and Phase II trials, which have costs of $1.5 Million (100 pts at $15,700 per patient) and $400,000 (20 patients at $19,300 per patient). This doesn’t include the other costs of development including side trials for clarifying indication scope, toxicity effects, additional indications, local populations, costing trials and the list goes on. So for a drug that miraculously reached Phase I with no costs, had a perfect phase I,II and III trial, the total clinical costs would be approximately $28 Million Now consider that most drugs have multiple clinical trials running. An example being one of our new compounds have 9 different registration trials running at the moment and you immediately up the costs to the almost $300 Million. It is not hard to see how the $1 Billion price for reaching the market is easily achievable. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.1454/abstract Less than 5% of cancer drugs that reach animal testing phase ever get to market. Whether the company makes a profit on those 5% is not certain. Most drugs don’t even get to animal testing phase. I work for a large pharmaceutical company, where we run over 1 million unique screenings a day looking for potential target matches. This is pretty decent description of what happens during development. ![[image loading]](http://www.icdd-sas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/cost-avoidance-Model.png) Or alternatively ![[image loading]](http://www.portfoliomanagementsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/RD-Success.png) Now if you have a problem with accepting that bringing a drug to market is expensive please provide some counter argument as to why this is not the case. Why is he being charged $500k for a life saving drug As has been mentioned previously this is a rare disease with an incidence of “1-2 cases per million” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxysmal_nocturnal_hemoglobinuria#Epidemiology ). Thus the drug company can only expect to treat about 70 patients in Canada with which to recoup their costs. This assumes all patients would benefit and the company can get to them. Alexion is a small pharma company they have very little to diversify their costs and so have to charge the high price. But life is sacred and pharma is making money from sick people! Nobody is arguing that the sick should be taken advantage of. Quite the opposite, the Canadian system is celebrated as on of the best in the world because it provides the greatest benefit at the lowest cost. It is built for this purpose. It was designed, legislated and constructed specifically to minimise costs whilst maximising benefit for the whole country. This is where ethics come in and to argue the ethics of a nationalised health service is really pointless now. Suffice it to say that the Canadian health system is constructed to treat as many people as possible at the lowest cost possible. As for Pharma making money off of sick people, I counter with Pharma companies do not make people sick. In fact, often it is people who make people sick. I don’t see you guys up in arms about Intel, or Razor or Blizzard or any other company that vicariously supports a sedentary lifestyle. Lack of exercise and the increase in sedentary lifestyle is a known risk factor for diabetes and heart disease. So why should we support companies that support such a lifestyle? But Probulous, Pharma companies need sick people so they can make money. I will concede that if there was no sickness there would be no need for pharma companies. There would also be no need for hospitals or doctors. Are they evil as well? So what do we do? This is the question that should be asked. I assume that this person has already approached the company directly for support. Most large companies have a compassionate use program but as mentioned Alexion is small. Moving countries isn’t going to help because, as mentioned, Canada has one of the best systems in the world. There may be countries where this is listed but good luck getting in with the condition. I guess you could try and look for a trial that is enrolling? Probulous, you are a heartless bastard! Maybe I am, I don’t believe this is the truth but it is not beyond the realm of possibility. I feel for this young man, no-one enjoys making these decisions. It is an ugly reality that rationing of medication is real and cannot be avoided. Unfortunately, this is reality. Please if you disagree with what I have said, outline where and how you disagree. Otherwise this discussion just descends into rhetorical shouting matches. Very good post and well researched. I just want to point out, however, that the vast majority of pharma, especially the bigger ones, make way more money on their drugs than they spend on research. My friend is the head of a drug testing company based in China that does drug tests for both American and Chinese pharma (it's in China 'cause tax is easier or something iunno). Even though research for one round of new drugs will cost up to or around a billion USD, the thing is, the drugs that do make it through are very often charged astronomical cost, such that they can make a LOT of $$$ for it. The reason is NOT purely due to "covering research costs." It's because patent laws are strange and incomplete. Once a drug comes out onto the market, it's only a matter of time before another pharma is able to make their own copy of the drug. Usually by altering the makeup of the drug with some inactive ingredient/chemical. Of course, it's much more complex than I can describe, but the basic premise is quite simple. What does this mean? It basically means that the pharma that develops the drug originally will only have a small window of time where they can make maximum profits. As such, they will crank up the price of the drug to extremely high, sometimes extortionate prices before the inevitable copies come out. Pharma companies exist to make money. They do that very, very well. In the OP's friend's case, however, is a little more unique. The above process I described is usually for medication for diseases that aren't all that rare. In this case, the OP's friend's illness is so rare , that's is completely impossible for the company to make any kind of profit, or even to attempt to break even on costs, without charging an astronomical amount for it. This case is tragic and I truly wish there was something that could be done. But the fact of the matter is, pharma is a business, and a very well-run, fined tuned business. I wish the OP and his friend good luck. Definitely try to get some donations; it may help... :\ | ||
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Probulous
Australia3894 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:19 Trentelshark wrote:+ Show Spoiler + On June 23 2011 03:07 domovoi wrote: The basic "problem" is that there needs to be a way for companies to recoup their R&D, but we also don't like monopoly pricing. One solution I have seen is to have the government purchase the patent for fair-market value after the pharma company completes all testing. Fair-market value can be calculated by having competing pharma companies bid for the patent, and the government can simply say, "there is a 90% chance we will buy it" in order to incentivize the bidders to do their due diligence. Then the government just releases it into the public domain. The company I work for spends millions on R&D every year and there is a government tax credit for doing so. Doesn't recoup it all, but we certainly don't charge anywhere near what the pharmaseutical does in this story for our product, and the market we are in is not overly populated. At the end of the day these companies do NOT want you to find a solution to common issues (ask my brother who went to Laurentian what they did when the primary professor started experimenting with light waves to beat cancer since cells emit a lightwave and it worked...didn't last long before he was shutdown for "ethical" reasons) such as cancer or disease because they WILL go out of business, lose millions in taxes and people WILL be laid off work. There is probably a very good reason if the reason given was ethics. Trust me a pharma company would have nothing to do with this. Every research institution has an ethics committee they reviews research to make sure it adheres to stupiulated ethical guidelines. If this work was cancelled due to an ethics consideration, it has nothing to do with pharma. Call it conspiracy, it's the truth. How many billions are donated to say cancer research every year and all they do is feed us a cocktail of god knows what to "treat" it. The whole medical field is a complete joke and it's driven by dollars/people getting sick/people needing treatment, end of story. $500,000 a year cannot be justified, unless that company makes a single drug in which case they need to expand their horizons. It's disgusting. The joinpoint trend in US cancer mortality with associated APC(%) for cancer of the breast between 1975-2007, All Races. 1975-1990: Trend 0.4 (Significant) 1990-2007: -2.2 (Signigicant) http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html Basically breast cancer mortality has been coming down drastically over the last twenty years. I can't say whether this is due to better medication, prevention or awareness but it hardly damning evidence of a conspiracy to keep people sick. If drug development is expensive, surely it follows that it is not easy to develop multiple drugs. Sure don't put all your eggs in one basket, if you can! Remember Only 5% of drugs that reach clinical testing make it to market. | ||
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Detri
United Kingdom683 Posts
On June 22 2011 22:27 MidKnight wrote: Capitalism makes me sick sometimes.. Like, sure, it may have cost ridiculous amount of time and resources to come up with the drug. But now IT'S THERE. You can simply save person's life if you give it to him. But you don't because he doesn't pay you money.. Yea, I know that's how world works (someone made a point about vaccinations not being given to people in 3rd world countries, for example, due to monetary reasons), but it's just depressing when you start thinking about it.. Quote for truth, a lot of the drug that i see not really make it to market when they could just make the ones they have on the market cheaper. Sad world we live in, but this way creates jobs, income and money for people who work in the pharma industry (which has ridiculously high wages by the way) I'm actually leaving the industry in 6 weeks, spamming starcraft for 12/7 2 months before my course starts and going back to university to study MEng in Computer Science because of it. Whole industry makes me sick. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10180 Posts
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IzieBoy
United States865 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:34 Probulous wrote: But your logic is faulty. Companies don't get paid until the drug is on sale. Just because it has been discovered doesn't mean the discovery costs can be ignored. Companies don't earn their revenue through individual patients paying. They earn it through Hospitals, Insurance Companies and governments subsidising patient payments. If they openly charge patients 20K, the other payers have every right to question why the company charges them more. This is why most companies have a compassionate program. As soon as they set a lower price to anyone then everyone will expect that or lower. As for patents, they do cover specific rare diseases. I guess what you mean is they should be longer, allowing companies to earn more long term. This is a possibility, which might work. I should note companies are targeting rare conditions more and more, simply because they are often simpler to cure. Gleevec(US, Glivec elsewhere) was the first real rare disease blockbuster and made money because it cured the disease. Probulous, thanks for the gleevec example. so why don't the insurance companies cover Soliris? you sound very informed. you wouldn't mind if i asked what you do for a living? P.S. lol i wonder when Blizzard would get sued for promoting sedentary lifestyle. | ||
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summerloud
Austria1201 Posts
you guys have funny ideas about how economics should work and about "personal responsibility" so yeah, fuck this guy for not having enough money, drug companies need their profits as well, he should just develop an iphone app and make a quick million if he wants to live and its prolly his own fault for getting this disease anyways, right? | ||
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Probulous
Australia3894 Posts
On June 23 2011 11:28 IzieBoy wrote: thanks for the gleevec example. so why don't the insurance companies cover Soliris? you sound very informed. you wouldn't mind if i asked what you do for a living? Not sure. Like I said it depends on the economics of the situation. Insurance companies follow the same logic as governments, if it isn't cost-effective based on the probability of payout then they won't pay for it. I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that this sounds like a price issue. You have a small company trying to wring every dollar out of its most successful drug, and the payers trying to get the greatest benefit with their budget. I can't be certain without noting the details. Thank you. As I mentioned in my previous post (+ Show Spoiler + On June 23 2011 10:00 Probulous wrote:+ Show Spoiler + Calm down people, there is no need to get hysterical. You can't discuss with someone if they are shouting at you. There seems to be a lot of meaningless platitudes in this thread, which is a disservice the OP. So here are some points to consider. If you don't like them or have a counter argument please use some facts and figures so the discussion moves on. Is developing a drug expensive? This is a complicated question because the price is determined by many factors. Mostly it is due to the following:
In 2006 the Clinical Trial Benchmarking put average per patient costs for clinical trials at $26,000.00 USD ( http://www.lifesciencesworld.com/news/view/11080 ) The number of patients required per trial depends on the expected benefit as well as expected toxicity profile, however most registration trials have a minimum of 500 patients. Thus we can expect using rough estimates that each registration trial would cost approximately $26,000 x 1000 = $26,000,000 That is a big number. Even if my number estimates are high (I can tell you they are an underestimate), you are still looking at millions of dollars per trial. Now this is only the successful final phase III trial. There are also the previous Phase I and Phase II trials, which have costs of $1.5 Million (100 pts at $15,700 per patient) and $400,000 (20 patients at $19,300 per patient). This doesn’t include the other costs of development including side trials for clarifying indication scope, toxicity effects, additional indications, local populations, costing trials and the list goes on. So for a drug that miraculously reached Phase I with no costs, had a perfect phase I,II and III trial, the total clinical costs would be approximately $28 Million Now consider that most drugs have multiple clinical trials running. An example being one of our new compounds have 9 different registration trials running at the moment and you immediately up the costs to the almost $300 Million. It is not hard to see how the $1 Billion price for reaching the market is easily achievable. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.1454/abstract Less than 5% of cancer drugs that reach animal testing phase ever get to market. Whether the company makes a profit on those 5% is not certain. Most drugs don’t even get to animal testing phase. This is pretty decent description of what happens during development. Or alternatively Now if you have a problem with accepting that bringing a drug to market is expensive please provide some counter argument as to why this is not the case. Why is he being charged $500k for a life saving drug As has been mentioned previously this is a rare disease with an incidence of “1-2 cases per million” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxysmal_nocturnal_hemoglobinuria#Epidemiology ). Thus the drug company can only expect to treat about 70 patients in Canada with which to recoup their costs. This assumes all patients would benefit and the company can get to them. Alexion is a small pharma company they have very little to diversify their costs and so have to charge the high price. But life is sacred and pharma is making money from sick people! Nobody is arguing that the sick should be taken advantage of. Quite the opposite, the Canadian system is celebrated as on of the best in the world because it provides the greatest benefit at the lowest cost. It is built for this purpose. It was designed, legislated and constructed specifically to minimise costs whilst maximising benefit for the whole country. This is where ethics come in and to argue the ethics of a nationalised health service is really pointless now. Suffice it to say that the Canadian health system is constructed to treat as many people as possible at the lowest cost possible. As for Pharma making money off of sick people, I counter with Pharma companies do not make people sick. In fact, often it is people who make people sick. I don’t see you guys up in arms about Intel, or Razor or Blizzard or any other company that vicariously supports a sedentary lifestyle. Lack of exercise and the increase in sedentary lifestyle is a known risk factor for diabetes and heart disease. So why should we support companies that support such a lifestyle? But Probulous, Pharma companies need sick people so they can make money. I will concede that if there was no sickness there would be no need for pharma companies. There would also be no need for hospitals or doctors. Are they evil as well? So what do we do? This is the question that should be asked. I assume that this person has already approached the company directly for support. Most large companies have a compassionate use program but as mentioned Alexion is small. Moving countries isn’t going to help because, as mentioned, Canada has one of the best systems in the world. There may be countries where this is listed but good luck getting in with the condition. I guess you could try and look for a trial that is enrolling? Probulous, you are a heartless bastard! Maybe I am, I don’t believe this is the truth but it is not beyond the realm of possibility. I feel for this young man, no-one enjoys making these decisions. It is an ugly reality that rationing of medication is real and cannot be avoided. Unfortunately, this is reality. Please if you disagree with what I have said, outline where and how you disagree. Otherwise this discussion just descends into rhetorical shouting matches. I know this may make me look biased but I do try at least provide information along with my opinions. Again, if there is something that I have said that doesn't appear to be correct, I will change it. | ||
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Detri
United Kingdom683 Posts
I feel for you guys, you need to get that sorted out, pay more for food and fuel due to higher tax... get free health care? sounds like a good deal to me. But im sure the idea of an even slightly socialist government freaks you guys out due to the whole cold war BS with those damn COMMIES!  But yeah sucks not to have free healthcare, my brother probably would have died, due to the same heart defect i have as he was also uninsurable and needed a internal cardiac defibulator to stop him having minor heart attacks (much more serious than my own). He was 19 when that all started, and that would be such a waste of precious human life due to a government that just doesn't help those who cant get insurance. If we were american. | ||
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
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Trentelshark
Canada385 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:49 Probulous wrote: There is probably a very good reason if the reason given was ethics. Trust me a pharma company would have nothing to do with this. Every research institution has an ethics committee they reviews research to make sure it adheres to stupiulated ethical guidelines. If this work was cancelled due to an ethics consideration, it has nothing to do with pharma. I would agree if it weren't for the reason that the research only entailed hitting the "bad cells' with a wavelength of light that offset their "natural" wavelength therefore allowing it to not function and destroying it in its entirety. "Ethics commitees" are just a title, at the end of the day their goal is to make money, survive and show they are a worthwhile body to have around/support/employ. You're right they all have one, they all have a "code" but the research was so un-intrusive to the human body, did not use cloning/stemcell/etc it's hard to come up with a valid reason they shut it down. At the end of the day we'll never know, but think what's at stake if pharmaseutical companies, health care systems, governments etc couldn't charge the outrageous wages they do to keep us hanging by a thread when the worst case scenario arises? It's a multi-billion dollar industry easily. | ||
KwarK
United States41957 Posts
On June 23 2011 11:44 Detri wrote: And seriously reading this thread makes me so GLAD to live in Northern Ireland. we don't even have to pay the nominal £7 prescription fee any more, 100% free medicines regardless, and i've had serious leg problems due to a car crash, serious stomach problems when i was 16. I could even imagine having to worry about paying for endoscopes, and ECG's and regular things i need all the time. (due to a congenial heart defect hypertrophic cardiomyopathy for those who are curious) i would probably be completely uninsurable in the us. I feel for you guys, you need to get that sorted out, pay more for food and fuel due to higher tax... get free health care? sounds like a good deal to me. But im sure the idea of an even slightly socialist government freaks you guys out due to the whole cold war BS with those damn COMMIES! But yeah sucks not to have free healthcare, my brother probably would have died, due to the same heart defect i have as he was also uninsurable and needed a internal cardiac defibulator to stop him having minor heart attacks (much more serious than my own). He was 19 when that all started, and that would be such a waste of precious human life due to a government that just doesn't help those who cant get insurance. If we were american. There is no way in hell the NHS would pay 500k a year for this. We have rationing, treatments are weighed on cost effectiveness and I doubt this would qualify. | ||
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dusters
United States57 Posts
On June 23 2011 11:37 summerloud wrote: in a thread like this im almost 100% sure i could guess all the posters that are from the united states just by reading their posts you guys have funny ideas about how economics should work and about "personal responsibility" so yeah, fuck this guy for not having enough money, drug companies need their profits as well, he should just develop an iphone app and make a quick million if he wants to live and its prolly his own fault for getting this disease anyways, right? Way to be biased against the US. What, you expect drug companies to spend millions of dollars researching new drugs for people only to go out and get nothing in return? Drug companies already make shit for profits. | ||
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nitdkim
1264 Posts
On June 23 2011 11:52 cLutZ wrote: Pretty sure the rare blood disease, not the cost is the death sentence. You realize that his friend is going to die right... this shit is what you come up with when reading something like this? Go be a wise-ass somewhere else. | ||
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Probulous
Australia3894 Posts
On June 23 2011 11:54 Trentelshark wrote: I would agree if it weren't for the reason that the research only entailed hitting the "bad cells' with a wavelength of light that offset their "natural" wavelength therefore allowing it to not function and destroying it in its entirety. "Ethics commitees" are just a title, at the end of the day their goal is to make money, survive and show they are a worthwhile body to have around/support/employ. You're right they all have one, they all have a "code" but the research was so un-intrusive to the human body, did not use cloning/stemcell/etc it's hard to come up with a valid reason they shut it down. At the end of the day we'll never know, but think what's at stake if pharmaseutical companies, health care systems, governments etc couldn't charge the outrageous wages they do to keep us hanging by a thread when the worst case scenario arises? It's a multi-billion dollar industry easily. Was he testing this in humans? Or in a laboratory with cells. My suspicion is he was testing it in either animals or humans. Ethics committees have no pharma represetnative. They are made up of other doctors, a legal representative, members of the local community and usually an ethics specialist. Their purpose is to put the research through a rigorous evaluation on the good that could come from it. If the research is in humans there has to be a very clear rationale for using this therapy. I see no way pharma would be able to influence that decision short of buying off committee members. If you are suggesting this then something more than gut feel is needed. | ||
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Reborn8u
United States1761 Posts
It's a long shot, but you would be amazed what a little time and some thoughtful words can do. If this person has a conscience it will be very difficult for him or her to justify, in their own mind, letting your friend die because of profit margins. Most major drug companies are extremely profitable and many wealthy people realize how blessed they are and practice philanthropy. | ||
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Flushot
United States218 Posts
I do feel bad for him, but I don't see this issue being resolved any time soon and certainly not within a year. | ||
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