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.
gjm@luckytran In a hypothetical world without those greedy bastards at Gilead, though, we don't get lenacapavir at $25/year, we get no lenacapavir at all. (Because lenacapavir was discovered by Gilead. They were willing to put in the effort and resources because they hoped it would lead them to a drug that they could make a lot of money from.)
In a more distant hypothetical world without capitalism, _maybe_ we get all the same drug discovery that in our rotten greedy capitalist world is done by companies who hope it will make them rich, and then the drugs get made available at non-extortionate prices. That would be nice. But how do you know that's what we'd get?
Patrick H. Lauke
@patrick_h_lauke @luckytran Different drugs. If your point is that Gilead are evil greedy bastards, you may well be right, but _my_ point is that capitalism enables us to get some of the evil greedy bastards to do drug discovery, software development, etc., rather than traditional evil-greedy-bastard activities like theft, and the world is better overall when it gets _both_ the drug-discovery efforts of scientists in it for the sheer joy of discovery _and_ the drug-discovery efforts of evil greedy bastards chasing monster profits. In this case it got us lenacapavir. For the moment "us" means mostly rich people because of the price, and that sucks, but it's better than the drug not existing at all, and the price won't be $40k/year for ever.