Dr. Lucky Tran 
Gilead has announced that lenacapavir, the game-changing HIV prevention drug just approved by the FDA will cost $28,218 USD per person per year.
Researchers say a generic version could be made for just $25 per person a year.
Capitalism kills.
pmonks (330ppm)@luckytran Of course a generic version could be manufactured more cheaply - those companies don’t incur much if any R&D, clinical trial, regulatory approval, etc. costs.
And before anyone accuses me of living at the opposite end of the spectrum, no I don’t think drug developers should be able to generate massive profits off their IP in perpetuity either. But the cost of development is real, substantial (especially due to the large %age of R&D failures that we never hear about), and has to be amortised somehow or else drug innovation will halt.
Kris Hardy@pmonks @luckytran Many of these costs are often funded by NIH contracts. I haven't gone through to see how much of US taxpayer dollars have already gone into it's development, and Gilead hasn't published their ROI AFAIK, so it is currently impossible to tell whether the price is reasonable or not. And THAT is a huge problem.
The Doctor
unlofl [Promoted Toot]@drwho @nonlinear @pmonks @luckytran and marketing is frequently a bigger part of their capital expenditures than research.
If we ban drug ads, then they'd be able to make drugs without gouging us /s
@unlofl @drwho @nonlinear @luckytran While I 100% agree with banning marketing of pharmaceuticals (and medical devices, and supplements, and beauty products, and …), and indeed some countries do exactly that, I dispute your claim that it’s a larger part of the cost of drug development than R&D. I suspect you’re failing to account for the majority of R&D that silently, but expensively, fails. Science is *hard*.
@drwho @unlofl @nonlinear @luckytran It doesn’t really. Drug development is *essentially hard*, and if we as a society want innovative new drugs, we have to amortise the inevitable failures along the way.
@pmonks @unlofl @nonlinear @luckytran Drug development is a Hard Problem; we agree on this.
The company I do research for right now does not do a lot of advertising because they're a consultancy. But some of our clients spend $10us for every $1us of product on advertising alone. They race to get the line going up in the same quarter as the product hits the market.
Relative size of the company is part of it. The big ones got big by being maniacs about getting as much sales revenue as possible.
@drwho @unlofl @nonlinear @luckytran Yep, and as I said way back in my original reply, I’m by no means in favour of pharmaceutical companies having an unrestricted perpetual monopoly on the drugs they develop. But I *STRONGLY* feel that without _some_ level of protected revenue for drug developers, innovation will cease, and that leaves society at large in a far worse position.
IOW there’s a balance that has to be struck between unreasonable profits on the one hand and lack of innovation on the other. I doubt we’re at the optimal point on that spectrum (heck I doubt there *is* a static optimal point on that spectrum), and should be actively and continually striving to move towards where we think it is, but people who make naive binary statements like “pHaRMa BaD gENeRiCs gOoD” have a remarkably shallow understanding of how drugs (and medical equipment, and …) are actually developed.
@pmonks @unlofl @nonlinear @luckytran I saw that; I get that. It's the seeking unreasonable profits that makes me angry, and from seeing the wiring under the board once in a while as often as not they're pretty honest about it. Just because I'm an engineer doesn't mean I'm not listening in, you know?
@pmonks @unlofl @nonlinear @luckytran That said, I've been analyzing the data I've been collecting in the process and I have found a correlation between how big and how old a pharmaceutical company is and how maniacal they are about making money hand over fist.
@drwho @unlofl @nonlinear @luckytran 100% agree - again, I said this in my very first reply in this thread.
But those who say the answer is “no profit - just let the generic manufacturers in right away and let them make a little bit of money instead of gouging the public” are completely missing the point about how drugs get developed.