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Possible Cure for Cancer
boykster:
--- Quote from: AtomSmasher on January 18, 2007, 07:51:38 pm ---Except if this drug works, no company has a patent on the drug which means any company can make it and they can already make it cheap. That means if it works, pharmaceutical companies will be out a lot of money.
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Thats actually a fairly thin argument. Even if this is as effective as the research shows that it might be (which would be great!), it won't be 100% effective for all types of cancers at all stages. There will still be a continuing market for many types of chemotherapeutic agents that are revenue generators for pharma companies.
I have worked in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry for the past 10+ years, and it is blatantly FALSE that the primary ideal of these companies is to bilk sick people out of money. That's a sensationalized profile that has been propagated and inflated by the media. Sure, the companies are in the business of staying in business, and successful companies are out there to make money, that's obvious. But to portray research scientists working in for-profit fields of research as heartless money grubbers, that's just plain wrong.
This may be a universal cure / treatment for many types of cancer, but trust me, there isn't a "hidden" formula that the big pharma companies have been hiding from the public for years. If there was, these companies wouldn't have been spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars researching the pathways that lead to cancer development, how cancer cells differ from healthy cells, etc.
Its not greedy doctors and pharmaceutical companies that are solely responsible for the high cost of health care, its the rising costs of doing business in this industry. It costs nearly a billion dollars to bring a drug candidate to the market, and that's generally AFTER the early stage research has been done to discover the drug candidate, and disregarding the 100 other candidates that didn't make it to the pre-clinical stage of drug development. A BILLION dollars, and that doesn't guarantee approval. Do you think McDonalds would come out with a new shake flavor if it cost a billion dollars to develop the flavor, with no guarantee that it would sell?
shmokes:
Additionally, Pandora's Box is open. The drug companies can't just put their head in the sand and hope it goes away. They simply have to adjust their business around the realities of the market, as they have always done. The reality is that many or all of them will make a version of this drug and they'll transfer much of their cancer research dollars to alzheimers or parkinson's or arthritis or herpes or aids, etc. (assuming that the drug lives up to its potential).
And when the people like the tinfoil hatters in this thread make comments about them being evil they'll say, "You know what? Go ---fudgesicle--- yourself. We cured cancer."
DrewKaree:
--- Quote from: boykster on January 18, 2007, 09:12:45 pm ---
--- Quote from: AtomSmasher on January 18, 2007, 07:51:38 pm ---Except if this drug works, no company has a patent on the drug which means any company can make it and they can already make it cheap. That means if it works, pharmaceutical companies will be out a lot of money.
--- End quote ---
Thats actually a fairly thin argument. Even if this is as effective as the research shows that it might be (which would be great!), it won't be 100% effective for all types of cancers at all stages. There will still be a continuing market for many types of chemotherapeutic agents that are revenue generators for pharma companies.
I have worked in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry for the past 10+ years, and it is blatantly FALSE that the primary ideal of these companies is to bilk sick people out of money. That's a sensationalized profile that has been propagated and inflated by the media. Sure, the companies are in the business of staying in business, and successful companies are out there to make money, that's obvious. But to portray research scientists working in for-profit fields of research as heartless money grubbers.
This may be a universal cure / treatment for many types of cancer, but trust me, there isn't a "hidden" formula that the big pharma companies have been hiding from the public for years. If there was, these companies wouldn't have been spending literally hundreds of billions of dollars researching the pathways that lead to cancer development, how cancer cells differ from healthy cells, etc.
Its not greedy doctors and pharmaceutical companies that are solely responsible for the high cost of health care, its the rising costs of doing business in this industry. It costs nearly a billion dollars to bring a drug candidate to the market, and that's generally AFTER the early stage research has been done to discover the drug candidate, and disregarding the 100 other candidates that didn't make it to the pre-clinical stage of drug development. A BILLION dollars, and that doesn't guarantee approval. Do you think McDonalds would come out with a new shake flavor if it cost a billion dollars to develop the flavor, with no guarantee that it would sell?
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Who do those billions get passed on to?
Why don't those pharma companies do the kind-hearted thing and eat all those costs so they can save a few lives?
I like when things are explained like what boykster did above, yet people still inject emotion into their arguments about why things should be better for them or complain about the high costs of things.
If I didn't know better, boykster coulda been talking about the oil industry ;D
AtomSmasher:
I don't think the drug companies can do anything to stop this drug if it does work since the public now knows about it, but they will lose billions of dollars if it does, no question about it. Of course now they will start trying to perfect the drug and changing it so it works for more types of cancers, which they could then patent the new formula and start making money again, but they will never make the same kind of money off cancer patients as they are now (assuming the drug works). I'm not saying its a bad thing that money is the driving force of drug companies. Their pursuit of money drives them to do more medical research and improve on current medications.
"The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind." - Gordon Gekko
boykster:
Trust me, if "cancer" was "cured", the entire pharmaceutical / biotech industry would heave a collective sigh of relief. From a profitiability standpoint, obesity, heart-disease, erectile dysfunction, and hair loss are much larger and more lucrative markets, and with the "big C" out of the way so to speak, research dollars would be directed en masse towards those efforts. Considering most cancer therapies enter the market for treating late-stage patients (ie terminal cancer) due to FDA requirements for clinical trials, the myth that pharma companies want to keep cancer patients alive as "cash cows" is completely ridiculous.
Here's a real-world example from the inside of the industry. Up until about a month ago, I managed a research informatics department for a biotech company. The focus of the site I worked at was Cystic Fibrosis. At this time, there is no cure for CF, but the drug developed by my company (at the time, as very small biotech company) was the most effective therapy for treating the primary complication of CF -> Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections of mucous that would accumulate in patient's lungs due to complications of CF. 10 years ago, the life expectancy of a person who developed CF was late teens, early 20's...that is now up to 35. That's not entirely due to the my company's product, but it does play a large part in that. The work we did solving the genome of this organism is now in the public domain -> www.pseudomonas.com . ANY company or research organization that wants to use this work is free to, in fact they are encouraged to.
About a year ago, 2 service techs from the compressed gas company that we use at our site were walking down the hall outside my office. I had a large circular map of the P.aeruginosa genome on the wall outside my office, and i could hear them trying to figure out what it was. Since it was my group and my company that sequenced the P.aeruginosa genome in the late 90's, I stepped out of my office and explained what it was, and that it was this organism that caused a large number of complications for CF patients and that our company had not only sequenced the genome, but had developed the leading pharmaceutical for CF patients.
As soon as the words Cystic Fibrosis came out of my mouth, I could see that one of the guys demeanor had changed. He told me that his 3month old daughter had just been diagnosed with CF a week before. He was noticeably upset, even though his daughter's physician had assured him that the treatments had advanced and that she should live a long full life despite her disease. I spent about an hour with him, showing him resources on how biotech and pharma companies were committed to not just treating symptoms, but finding cures for this disease....a relatively small market disease at that. He left that day much more confident and with a solid understanding of his daughters disease, and what to expect, and with the solid understanding that there are hundreds, if not thousands of people working to make her life better.
I still correspond with him, even though I no longer work for that company. His daughter is doing great, she's responding to mild therapy and shows no outward symptoms of respiratory distress.
THAT is why I work in this industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cystic_fibrosis
http://www.pseudomonas.com/
--- Quote from: DrewKaree on January 18, 2007, 10:50:34 pm ---Who do those billions get passed on to?
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Lots of places. Companies that develop instruments, contract research organizations, salaries like mine, computer hardware / software companies, lawyers, local businesses that supply material goods and services, etc. Just like any large development effort, the dollars spent are diverse and affect the local economy surrounding the facilities.
--- Quote from: DrewKaree on January 18, 2007, 10:50:34 pm ---Why don't those pharma companies do the kind-hearted thing and eat all those costs so they can save a few lives?
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Trust me, they minimize costs as much as they can. They are in the business of being in business, however, if the company invests billions and goes out of business, how does that benefit the patient? You may not realize that the majority of those costs are to conduct clinical trials to satisfy the requirements of the FDA for safety and effectiveness. Sure, eating the costs <might> "save a few lives", but building a sustainable business will save many-fold more.
--- Quote from: DrewKaree on January 18, 2007, 10:50:34 pm ---If I didn't know better, boykster coulda been talking about the oil industry ;D
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I agree.