88% of the drugs that enter clinical trials do NOT receive FDA approval and never come to market for sale to the general public. (Source: Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development)
It's why they are expensive - Advanced Prostate...
It's why they are expensive
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tallguy2
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Thanks for information.
By comparison, 0% of alternative treatments never come to market for sale to the general public.
In addition, almost all drugs and natural products fail screening for potential biochemical activity or toxicity or pharmacodynamics. Of the few that get through, most fail toxicology or any sign of potential efficacy in Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials. It's a miracle that we get any safe and effective new drugs at all.
On the other hand, e.g. Pfizer payed $14 billion in cash for Xtandi. So it has to be expensive to make this purchase profitable.
With the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act which benefits pharmaceutical companies by lowering standards for drug approvals, more drugs will get through the process. I'm not convinced it is a good thing.
Magnus1964 in reply to
I love the drug commercials that say "may drowsiness, headaches, vomiting, thoughts of suicide, coma and death. And by the way, we are one of very few countries that allow drug companies to advertise on TV. Why do we need to know about drugs. It is the doctors job to prescribe drugs.
The ads exist so we, the patients, may ask “if this new (designer) drug is right for me.” Pressure on some (not all) physicians, who have also been paid a visit by the big pharmaceutical reps with their samples?
in reply to tallguy2
I’ve seen the reps ..
Magnus1964 in reply to
Those long trial and other approvals drugs must go through keep small companies from putting out better and cheaper drugs. Years ago a lot of the testing was done by the FDA.
Wow. I guess that's why Insulin, which was invented in the 1920's, is 300 dollars a vial here and 30 in Canada. They must still be recouping their R&D costs.
Insulin was discovered (not invented) in the 1920's:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
A very brief description of a version of synthesizing insulin:
nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/from...
Manufacturing regulations for drugs:
fda.gov/drugs/pharmaceutica...
A story on insulin pricing:
npr.org/sections/health-sho...
Wow. Thank you for bettering me. I'll never make that dumb mistake again and call it a "invention".
It seems that corporate greed and laws allowed by our government allow insulin to be 300 a vial here.
Please read the information in the first link that I posted. Insulin, the naturally occurring one in our pancreas, was discovered in the 1920's. The synthetic one that is used today was invented in the 1970's -- it replaced bovine/porcine sources of insulin for injection.
That's awesome, man. So you want to pick that battle for the reason being that the same insulin in Canada is 30 compared to 300 here. You must think you're a genius and everyone else is stupid.
You don't need advertising for insulin. It's very simple - either you get insulin and live or you die. There is no advertisement needed. You're so full of shit on here. You're nothing but a farmabootlicker.
I would agree with your prior statement "It seems that corporate greed and laws allowed by our government allow insulin to be 300 a vial here." How would price limits be set or are more subsidies needed? None of it is simple and it definitely brings out the emotions in people -- I take no offense.
That's going to require a huge conversation that I don't want to start typing here, but I'll give you the tip of it.
First, there is no such thing as a "free market". "Free market" in America is defined as "no government intervention". Which is absolutely ridiculous because patent laws would be considered government intervention. So the patent laws that we have right now in pharmaceuticals would have to be changed. A company should not be able to hold the patent of a medication that was DISCOVERED decades and decades ago. They should also not be able to acquire a patent from the US government that was taxpayer funded and then turn around and take that patent and charge ridiculous sums of money. If you want to go that far, it's time to remove all taxpayer funds to all universities and get rid of student loans.
You then need to be able to negotiate to be in the American "free market". Yet, medicare does not directly negotiate for drug pricing and allows private entities too. Which then incentivizes increased costs. Medicare needs to be able to start negotiating directly for drug pricing.
Patent laws need to be changed, the way we negotiate needs to be changed, all of the incentives need to be changed. The complete greed of the stock market within the pharmaceutical business needs to be changed. Stock buybacks were considered market manipulation until the early 1980's, and then Saint Raygun got in and that all changed. Which further shows how bullshit the American "free market" is.
I'm not advocating for communism or complete government control, which is a favorite strawman of the current American Koch party over here, but the current pharmaceutical system is a complete financial and moral failure. People need to be convicted.
Like toll bridges. Still paying for Golden State Bridge. Googled it and was stunned that they just take a picture of your license plate and send you a bill. No toll takers. Invasion of privacy without even an apology. Steven Hawking and others are right. Alexa will stab us in the back. They may just as well insert a chip in every new born child. The world is getting creepy.
It's going to get worse and worse. Large companies want to be able to get all your health information and genetic information. They want to be able to know if you have any health conditions and if they will hire you. Is there a chance that you might get cancer? Well now the company won't hire you because they don't want to take the "risk".
Google, Apple - all the rest - monopolies. Everything you read, everything you write, all your health information, you habits - all put into a database. Nobody cares though. Like others have said, we have traded convenience for privacy a long time ago.
It's going to get a lot worse in America before it gets better. Everything is going to have a price and everything is going to be able to be discarded - especially life.
Most drugs are discovered by research universities with tax payer dollars. Drug companies just buy the drug and send it through the trials before selling them for large profits. True not all of them get through the trails, but that does account for the over prices drugs they do sell.
We have all heard the horror stories of drug companies buying the patent then raising the prices 2 or 3 times then the previous company charged. I do think this is some kind of collusion.
in reply to Magnus1964
Magnus1964, I agree. I don't see how you can justify the high prices. It's really out of proportion to the costs. The high prices are a reflection of free-market capitalism. Whatever the market will bear. The way the Pharma Bros see it, as long as someone is paying it, it's not too high.
By the way, this is not a political statement just reality.
dentaltwin in reply to
It's not really a free market if the pharma companies set the price and Medicare and private insurance will pay for it, and pass the costs on to the public.
Thanks for your honest comments, Nalakrats. This is clearly a multi-faceted issue, so perhaps the title of my post is too simplistic.
Big pharma is funding many, many clinical trials that we may be the beneficiaries of, if these trials pan out. I am bullish on the precision medicine that is being reported at the ASCO conference. I look forward to Tall_Allen's future posts.
and maybe thats a good thing..How about that guy who charged a fortune for a drug?Was it that or was he just an ordinary crook?
There is no money for alternative drugs because they are not bound up in made up B/S and most likely natural and easy and cheap to get. Your body doesnt know the difference.
Big pharma would love to take over the supplements market. Big profits and higher for us.
Actually, why hasn't a group of people founded a charitable organization that takes all of these useful supplements and initiated clinical trials? Would you contribute to such a charity?
Why doesn't a billionaire found one of these instead of contributing to research for drug discovery?
No financial return would be expected from the contributors in either case above -- just done for the benefit of mankind.
There is an organization like that. It's called the Patient Access Network.
Why do the same drugs in other countries usually cost far less than in the US? Government price controls? Are we the only ones (US) that have to pay for the R&D? Spread the R&D costs around the world
Information on the sale by UCLA:
newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/...
"In 2005, UCLA licensed the chemical compound’s patent to pharmaceutical company Medivation Inc. of San Francisco. Medivation received FDA approval in 2012 to market Xtandi as a prostate cancer medication. Medivation and its sub-licensee, Astellas Pharma Inc. of Tokyo, are now selling Xtandi worldwide. UCLA has no role in the marketing or sale of Xtandi."
And Pfizer's subsequent acquisition of Medivation:
reuters.com/article/us-medi...
I do note that "We the people" do not have drug manufacturing facilities. Are you advocating for a version of socialized medicine?
My business involves outfitting and customizing large yachts. The cost of these at the low end is about 5-6 million. Several years ago I had a couple in their 40's who had just bought a new yacht. They had founded a business that researched how to price new drugs. Their customers were all the big mfg. that we all know. I once asked them how they could ever find a price for a drug given the development costs and all. Their response....development cost isn't even in the equation, it is all about what people are willing to pay. All true.
Wow...
OT comment: Anyone [else] do some grocery shopping at ALDI's for the following reasons too?
"You have no idea--just think why these companies pay somewhere in the area of 3/4 of a billion dollars on lobbying, campaigns, and other projects of interest to our elected officials. Oh--and add up their obnoxious TV commercials, its all incredible."
For now, let's ignore the cost due to the ratio of hits to misses in the clinical pathway for drug development and deal with the actual manufacturing of the drug: the actual raw materials/chemicals used in synthesis, facility/factory, utilities, process equipment and consumables (chromatography media doesn't last forever), workers, supervisors, managers, quality personnel, information systems, in-house and/or out-sourced analytical testing, packaging equipment and I'm sure that you could add to this list from your own experience with manufacturing. Didn't mention the cost of the rest of the corporate structure and functions (HR, accounting, advertising, executives, etc.) It would be like stating that the cost of curcumin extract should be no more than, let's say for example, four times or 400% the cost of the seeds for growing the tumeric.
This would be more credible if the drug companies were not trumpeting the cost of R & D as the driver of medication costs and then selling to the rest of the world for a fraction of what we're paying in the U.S.
Drugs are scandalously expensive here do to the corporate greed of Big Pharma and the graft and corruption of Big Pharma being in the pocket of every congressman/woman. Very simple. Congress passed a law forbidding CMS (which administers Medicare) from negotiating prices. The rest of the developed world does not pay retail. We do because of the collusion of the Congress with Big Pharma. That simple. The crap they deal out about the costs of developing new drugs is a Madison Avenue lie invented by Big Pharma and swallowed by the gullible and mouthed by the corrupt as well as the other beneficiaries of Big Pharma. Just look at the ads on TV for this or that me-too drug; TV loves drug ads.
Yes, yes and yes.
HERE WE GO AGAIN....
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Thursday 05/23/2019 12:26 AM DST
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