Hypothetical scenario: If a cure for cancer or AIDS was discovered

[Ignacio Upton]

What if a cure for either cancer or AIDS was discovered, and the drug companies decide that you can only get it if you pay hundreds or thousands of dollars, what would you do? Would you steal it and give it to loved ones who may be afflicted? Or would you acquiesce? Personally, I would steal it, because for anyone to profit off of other people's suffering is wrong. A good compromise, however, would be for the government to seize ownership of the drug from the drug company that discovered it, give it away for free, and then compensate the drug company so it won't bitch about lost profits.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Sounds good.

Now, let's say you're a scientist and you've been working your whole life on a cancer drug. And after decades you do it.

Now, should you become rich and famous?

[Ignacio Upton]

I think you should get compensated

But the individual patients should get the drug for free.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. So the scientist who cures cancer...

gets a check for expenses and a living salary?

[Ignacio Upton]

5. If he works for a for-profit company, then yes

But he should be given a single check from the government, and that should be the end of it. Otherwise, no patient should have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a cure.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Here's what I suggest.

Whoever cures cancer should be showered with wealth. All of their wildest dreams should come true. Build a memorial for them on the Mall in D.C.

That said, everybody, poor included, should have access to the drug. The government can pick up the tab for anybody that can't afford it.

[athena]

23. There are several problems with that.

If and when a cure for cancer is discovered, it will not be the accomplishment of a single person. It will be the culmination of the cumulative efforts of thousands of men and women, each of whom made a small but essential step. People like to think that science is advanced mainly by a handful of geniuses who are light-years ahead of their peers, but the reality is rarely like that. Hundreds of specialists can contribute more-or-less directly to a single discovery.

When the cure is found and some drug company makes money off of it, the CEO and the shareholders will be the ones showered with wealth. It won't be the starving graduate student who published an important paper as part of his/her thesis or the engineers who built the apparatus, or the group that performed the experiments, or those who participated in the drug trials.

I was reading recently that drug companies actually do little other than advertise their products and claim credit for other people's work. Most of the actual work happens at research labs such as the NIH:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/09/09_401.html?welcome=true

Angell disputes the industry’s reputation as an “engine of innovation,” arguing that the top U.S. drug makers spend 2.5 times as much on marketing and administration as they do on research. At least a third of the drugs marketed by industry leaders were discovered by universities or small biotech companies, writes Angell, but they’re sold to the public at inflated prices. She cites Taxol, the cancer drug discovered by the National Institutes of Health, but sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $20,000 a year, reportedly 20 times the manufacturing cost. The company agreed to pay the NIH only 0.5 percent in royalties for the drug.

[Gormy Cuss]

13. Unless the scientist developed it independently, it's the employer that reaps the big rewards.

The scientist may only get a bonus. That's the reality of many corporate employment agreements. The real question is, what is a reasonable rate of return on research that was in all likelihood subsidized by the government, whether directly through R & D grants or indirectly through tax credits and the like?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. And?

Then the employer and its investors should get rich.

[Gormy Cuss]

18. The reality is that the employer and investors will try to reap riches at the expense of patients

unless there is some mechanism to correct for that. It takes years to produce a drug with market potential but most pharmaceutical companies recoup their cost in only a few years by exploiting the patent restriction, and many have taken government aid through direct and indirect means during the R & D phase. The government can restrict the short term profit taking but allows a reasonable rate of return and the company and investors would still reap handsome profits. Should they get rich at the expense of patients? No. That is flat out unethical. The government has intervened in the case of low profitability drugs (so called orphan drugs)because the free market approach was already proven to be of limited use. To restrain profitability in order to assure patient access is the other side of the coin.

The point is probably moot, however, because cancer isn't likely to be cured with a single solution.

[MadMaddie]

2. You wouldn't have to worry about even hearing that a cure has

been discovered because the Pharmaceuticals make billions off of sick people taking their medicine.

And the idea of the government seizing it...depends on which government you are talking about because if it's Repug they only care about profits.

[Ignacio Upton]

4. Well, assuming Democrats are in control

Seizing "ownership" of the drug in the public interest makes perfect sense, as long as the company that discovered the drug is compensated afterwards.

[MadMaddie]

6. I agree with you.

[MissWaverly]

7. interesting idea

all I know is that I watched a special that showed how millions are dying in Africa from
Aids, something like 4 million have died in Kenya, activists demanded FREE drugs for
the people and now they are getting them, I am not sure of the details, you might look
this up, they had a special on PBS last week about it.

[Ignacio Upton]

8. Cool

:thumbsup:

[MissWaverly]

11. also you have probably heard that Iran claims an AIDs cure

from a herbal remedy, I heard that on the news somewhere in the last week.

[jilln]

10. I don't understand how the government seizing ownership and compensating the company is any solution

I mean, the government is getting the money from US, so instead of the person who needs the medicine paying, we all have to pay for it?

I don't have a solution. It's a complicated problem that involves the entire healthcare system. But the solution you propose would probably still give pharmaceutical companies obscene profits.

[iamjoy]

12. They're Entitled to Profit

pharmacuetical companies put millions of dollars into research for these drugs.
At universities and research centers across the country, doctors and other scientitists search for treatments and cures for diseases which kill us. And they search fo treatments for things to make our lives better.

They are entitled to recoup their investment, and profit handsomely for their efforts.

But, they should not profit obscenely. I can't give you the dollar amount or margin that makes it obscene. I can tell you though, that when the manufacturer of a statin takes a bunch of pharmacists and doctors to a high end steakhouse to give a talk on the condition their drug treats and then the statin that pharm company sells costs $100 per month. Well, that just doesn't seem right. It seems even less right if you know what a statin is. Get ready for this....


it's a cholestorol fighting drug. And they're having their dinner party at a steakhouse. Really.

[Ignacio Upton]

14. I agree that they should make money

The question is, how should they profit.

Because demand for such a cure will be immensely high, I could see them easily jacking the price up. Imagine having to pay $1,000 for a cure for cancer? If you are poor, game over!

[iamjoy]

19. What Drives Me Nuts

is the money they spend on advertising and marketing.

They shouldn't have to market their product. To me, medicines should be made for needs, not wants. If its for a need, advertising should not be necessary. Everyone should have insurance that pays for that medicine, or the government should help.

It is funny how Dubya talks about how we need to be better consumers of health care while taking money from companies that encourage you to "ask your doctor..." and promote wasteful, unnecessary expenses.

Of course, cures for life threatening diseases are in a different class. The normal laws that apply to a free market should not come into play when it is life and death.

They want to charge $1,000 bucks for Viagra, well, that's a different story.

[Glorfindel]

16. Things used to be so much simpler...

I'm old enough to remember when the Salk vaccine for polio first came out and what a miracle it was considered. Somehow, without depriving drug companies of their God-given rights to profits, the government made sure all schoolchildren were vaccinated, and stopped polio dead in its tracks. I realize that this is merely a case of prevention, not of cure, but the idea is still there. When did our country descend into such madness that a question such as you pose can even be asked? What a fucking shame. We have fallen so very far in such a short time.

[Cobalt Violet]

17. This is a cure for some people. It would work in some instances.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1887046,00050003.htm


Clinical trials on for low-cost hepatitis C drug

Vijay Dutt

London, January 2, 2007

Treatment for hepatitis C is likely to get cheaper in the near future, with clinical trials for a new drug — called PEGylated-interferon alpha molecule — beginning in India in 2007. The new affordable drug has been developed by Dr Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College based at Hammersmith hospital, with scientists from Imperial College and the London School of Pharmacy.

Calling their efforts “ethical pharmaceuticals, a revolutionary new model,” Shaunk said he and his colleagues have developed a cost-effective technology that allows them open up the interferon protein, drop in a sugar molecule called PEG and close the protein. The PEGylated-interferon retains its shape and cures hepatitis C infection in many of the 170 million people affected with the disease worldwide. The new method of pegylation does not infringe existing patents because it tweaks the molecular structure of an existing drug no longer under a 20-year patent to turn it into a new medicine that can be sold much cheaper.

The efforts of Shaunak and his colleague Steve Brocchini from the London School of Pharmacy will reduce the cost of treating hepatitis C to a fraction of the current cost. It will help millions in poor countries get a cure for hepatitis C, which is a leading cause of chronic liver disease and cancer.
<snip>

[SaveElmer]

20. The next election...if the candidate did not promise to force pharma...

To distribute it at a low cost...they would lose...

[ThoughtCriminal]

21. If a vaccine was discovered

The religious right would try to block it's approval.

[nevergiveup]

22. Cancer treatment is a huge

business in this country. Think of all the cancer treatment centers and facilities. If a scientist finds a cure, he and his secret will be deported to a deserted island.

[Evoman]

24. Science is expensive..I don't think a lot of people get that.

For every pill or medicine that is discovered, there are hundreds of dead ends. A scientist would not be able to do anything if it weren't for private labs and for profit pharmaceutical companies, unless the government did the funding (but then you get complaints about taxes, and "unuseful science"). Take into account production costs, and the labour costs and yes..drugs are expensive. Pharmaceutical companies have a right to profit from the research they fund....without them, you wouldn't HAVE that cure in the first place.

Now, there are obviously other issues here. There is an ethical line...drugs should cost enough for the company to make a profit, but not so exhorbant that people can't afford it. There should be some sort of regulation of prices.

Unless you want to socialize the pharmaceuticals, or get a national plan that would pay for those drugs (and neither of those plans are necessarily unrealistic or bad), then your only other choice is to pay, or pressure the goverment to regulate the industry so that the drugs are affordable. If you have to steal..well, I guess thats your moral choice and no one can make it for you. If the consequences are worth it...I guess you can go ahead.

But your expecations that "nobody should profit off other people's suffering" is naive and unrealistic. If there was no profit, why should scientists work? Why would pharmaceutical industries exist? You want to be paid for your work...why should scientist not get paid? If you feel so strongly about this..then I think you should seriously think of entering a scientific field, and do the work yourself. Or maybe we should take your wages to pay for the development costs?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

25. Did you guys see the article about DCA curing cancer-?

Dichloroacetate. It changes the metabolism of the cell. Cancer cells use up lots of sugar in glycolysis. Normal cells use their mitochondria. DCA switches the cells back to using their mitochondria.


There are many alternative treatments out there. So check out their track record.