4 of the most profitable products are mood altering non-prescription drugs and none are necessities.
Some things that I’m not clear on about pharmaceuticals…
…How much the government funds research into things like HIV and cancer drugs, and whether the fact that the public has already helped fund such drugs–if they do–affects the ultimate cost.
…How much money big pharma spends on developing and marketing drugs that represent only a tiny improvement-- if any–over aspirin or ibuprofen or some other very cheap but effective drug on which no one holds a patent, in comparison to the amount of money spent on new, lifesaving drugs.
…How much big pharma spends on advertising things like Nexium, Celebrex and so on, trying to get people to ask their doctor for a drug that they may not need.
Clearly there are drugs nowadays that can make a huge difference in people’s lives, but not all of them do. Where does the money go?
“…How much the government funds research into things like HIV and cancer drugs, and whether the fact that the public has already helped fund such drugs–if they do–affects the ultimate cost.”
The lion’s share of that money goes into academic funding. Private companies get awarded occasional grants, but in comparison to academia, that $$ is miniscule. The public, looking at the billions of $$ in research grants to big research labs, goes into overdrive - we fund the drug development! Not so simple. The academia’s ultimate goal is publications, but drug development is a tedious process involving all sorts of bureaucracy. It is not glorious, it is not publication-worthy. It takes a lot of private funds to turn someone’s academic discovery into a successful drug product. I have been on both sides of this equation and can say with certainty that without private funding by companies, drug development would not happen. As it is usually the case, the stuff we licensed from academia was not something that can be turned into a pharmaceutical directly by taking it through clinical trials. It was at best a lead, a hint at where to start our own research efforts. What we ended up with was so different from what we licensed that we could get our own patents on it, and the patent office will not issue a patent on an obvious derivation of someone else’s invention.
Second, the academia does not give the stuff away for free. The tech transfer offices at major research hubs are pretty savvy to get their money’s worth out of every license. And they will fight tooth and nail sometimes even if they know they are not entitled to more than what they bargained for - the most recent example is ASU getting smacked on the nose by a judge in AZ saying that they should not get a penny over the $850k from the license of a compound that did not even get incorporated into a successful drug. Well, guess what, the cost of making that drug just went up by the amount of $$ the company spent on defending itself in that lawsuit.
I do agree that a lot of advertising efforts need to be curbed, and they have been. Contrary to the popular belief, company reps are NOT allowed by law to wine and dine doctors. We get regular training on this stuff.
Thank you, @BunsenBurner, that is helpful in understanding what goes on.
I thought the point was to show the top selling products in light of the discussion of Big Pharma and their huge profits. None of the above drug containing products are produced by Big Pharma.
pure greed.
DH is a pharmacist. He’s never filled a prescription for daraprim but he named a couple of common, inexpensive generic drugs that have had similar huge price increases recently. One common drug used to be $4/prescription and now is over $200. Seems like preying on sick people to me.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Colchicine. A really old drug for gout. Now, it’s only available as brand name Colcrys. Same exact scenario. Only one manufacturer, no competition…jack up the price AND give it a sparkling new BRAND name…even though it had been off-patent, generic for lord knows how long, many decades, I’m sure. Something that would easily be on WalMart’s $4 list and now…an expensive brand name drug. We in hospital pharmacy have had this happen with several old injectable agents over the last couple of years. SMH. It is so not right.
Here’s the situation it puts us in. Yes, the old drugs may not be first line but they may be the last resort so we need to have them on hand. So, now we have bought $50K worth of product that may very well sit on our shelves and go out of date. More money lost in healthcare when we don’t have money to lose to begin with. AND…laws prevent a large hospital system from sharing inventory! That is another subject, but one that really drives up prices.
But this dude with the Daraprim is a special kind of jerk isn’t he? $750 a pill? Who can afford that? What insurance companies are going to okay that? I don’t see how it can be working for him.
The thing that irked me was he had the gall to say the company needs the income so they can research and bring other entities to market. Right. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
Just went to a branch of Chase Bank.
In front of the majority of the retailer counters, they place giant automatic machines (and get rid of most of their retailers) and asked the customer to use the machine instead.
Only one live person served the customers. Even though the waiting line is long, no customer wanted to learn and use the automatic machine. (This is one of the busiest branches here,)
Maybe they will eventually get rid of all personnel and force the customers to use the machines, or even better (for their bottom line), force the customers to use their web sites so that they do not need any branch office at all.
My gut feeling is that they will eventually get what they want, in the name of “productivity”, and likely ship most of their jobs overseas in order to fatten the bottom line, for the shareholders and the executives.
Supply and demand? In terms of human resources, with today’s technology, the cheap and abundant supply comes from a far away place, even when the demand is local. The invisible hand is at work, and no one can do anything about it.
importation is illegal, there are no domestic competitors, and the benefit to consumers is great, this a bad outcome. Seems to me the easiest and most sensible solution is to allow importation but perhaps there’s some reason why that is a problem.>>>>>>>>>
Overseas facilites obviously are not FDA inspected.
In my long career, I’ve known of only one exception and that was a couple of years ago when they approved one of the cancer drugs to be imported, doxorubicin.
Snake antivenins kept by zoos with exotic species must be imported through the Dept. of Agriculture. I guess technically they aren’t drugs because we were not able to simply get on the phone and order them from Africa.
(we had a man who imported snakes and he was bitten by some species of African cobra. We got antivenin from the National Zoo and he was still fading so the next closest was flown in from Pittsburgh. Our director had to go through all kinds of hoops to get product to replace to them and as I said, we had to hire an agent authorized by the Dept. of Agri. to accept the product into the US.)
I remember a CCer (an old timer), BDM, once said that, looking at the big picture, it is the finance (or distribution of the wealth) aspect of the medicine/drug that affects the wellness of people (especially those not in the first world) the most. Even without any new research, the quality of lives in terms of their health condition could be improved significantly if they have some access to some financial resources. In other word, it is mostly an economic problem, not a medicine/drug technology problem.
The other day, one of my coworkers expressed his opinion: He prefers that this world will not advance the technology for the next 5 or even 10 years. It will not affect the lives of most people. He later added that if we really want to do something about the technology, do it at a fraction of the speed that we have now (like fixing ongoing problems on the existing products to make them less buggy.) Bringing out a new generation of smartphones every two years is just ridiculous; it does not benefit anybody except those who really do not need the money because they have had plenty already. If anyone replaces their gadget every two years, I think it is due to their want, not their need.
excuse me, I meant to say Overseas facilites obviously are not ALL FDA inspected.
Would it be illegal for a group, such as an HIV support group, to pay to send an individual to India and purchase several year’s supply for all 1200 patients, and then distribute them, possibly for free? Would it be illegal to set up a non-profit to do this?>>>>>>>>>
Excellent question but… Arrange for a trip for Patient A who goes to India and is seen by Dr. I. who then writes a prescription for ONE year’s supply of *438,000 tablets? I’m not seeing how that could work. You wouldn’t have 1200 bottles of 365 tablets each appropriately labeled, nor would you have the sacred patient-physician relationship required for a doctor to prescribe. These are standards/laws here and I would imagine also in India.
It would be awesome if someone could get around it and stick it to the Skrelli (sp?) dude though!
*(there are multiple strengths and indications but for the sake of argument, let’s say 25 mg daily. So one tablet daily for 1200 patients is 438,000 tablets.)
Oh, those buffers! The endless hours of mixing and titrating those buffers!!
Oh, the humanity of it!
What buffers? 
Try running a column with a kilo of silica gel and a mix of methanol/DCM! Handling a 5-L
flask 1/3 full of t-BuLi solution… Performing a nitration on a scale large enough to take out half the lab wall… That’s how small molecule drug research is run. And that’s just small scale stuff.
Oh, and the best of all… donning on a moonsuit to clean up someone’s toxic waste spill.
Probably the main reason for “needing” to replace a mobile phone is damage or other failure. It seems like either many mobile phones are fragile, or many users are careless with them, or both. Ruggedized and waterproof mobile phones are available, but they are not that common. People are amazed when I show them that I can clean my waterproof mobile phone with a little water, which would likely cause most mobile phones to stop working.
I looked up most of those drugs that suddenly became expensive on Canada Pharmacy and the only one there was the doxycyline-like one (can’t remember the exact name). Most generics at Canada Pharmacy are made in India and through the magic of the British Commonwealth states are allowed to be sold in Canada as well. I don’t think anyone would have to actually go to India, but the problem is, no one else is making these drugs in any form, anywhere.
What it calls for is more regulation of the prices by the US government. Ooh, won’t they love that!
I have an iPhone 4 and I’ve dropped it onto tile from about 5 feet once and dropped it completely submerged into water 3 times. And I’ve also had it in my pocket and fallen on it before and dropped it many other times though not onto tile. Still works fine. And it’s a few years old now.
Breaking one of these things really seems like you gotta try to break it.
I had my iphone in my pocket when I jumped into a lake. I tried all the tricks to get it back to life, but none of them worked.
It happens.
Wait how do we get from drugs to phone so quickly?