Drug Companies and Doctors Battle Over th... - Cure Parkinson's
Drug Companies and Doctors Battle Over the Future of Fecal Transplants
“An obscene amount of money is being thrown around by companies trying to profit off of what nature made,” said Dr. Khoruts. “I don’t think there are clear villains here, but I worry that the regulators are not caught up on the latest science and that the interests of investors may be exceeding those of patients.”
This article gets off to a rough start by saying that hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. If FMT does what many scientists are expecting, the actual amount will easily be in the hundreds of billions as it will mean that FMT could potentially be used for many major diseases.
It certainly does seem that the pharmaceutical industry will do what they always do, do whatever they need to do to protect their profits! If they can not find a way to patent or otherwise guarantee that they will get a big slice of the FMT pie. If that means buying up every small company who is currently experimenting with FMT, it seems likely they will. If FMT works as is hoped, that would mean that the pharmaceutical industry could lose billions or trillions of dollars in profits each year in lost sales of their symptom treating products as opposed to FMT which would be more along the line of a cure. It is more profitable for them to maintain their hold on the treatment of symptoms as opposed to curing anything in which case they no longer have a customer for life as is their current status, where they not only have a customer for life, but they will have to develop other drugs to offset the bad side effects of the drugs they are already giving you for life!
I guess this makes me a pessimist, but the pharmaceutical industry has already shown they will lie and cheat and "do whatever is necessary" in order to insure that their profit stream never ends and only increases! There is no incentive for them to ever try and cure any disease and that seems like a serious conflict of interest imo for any company in the pharmaceutical industry!
Art
Hi Art,
We are talking about the occidental pharmaceutical industry. Not all countries behave the same way. With its strong government, they could take this path on a snap of their fingers.
Thank you so much for the article Iqbaliqbal. I do believe there is hope there, especially since reading this paper :
12/01/2016
Parkinson's Disease Linked to Microbiome
"Caltech scientists have discovered for the first time a functional link between bacteria in the intestines and Parkinson's disease (PD). The researchers show that changes in the composition of gut bacterial populations—or possibly gut bacteria themselves—are actively contributing to and may even cause the deterioration of motor skills that is the hallmark of this disease."
...
"The findings have important implications for the treatment of Parkinson's, the researchers say.
For many neurological conditions, the conventional treatment approach is to get a drug into the brain. However, if PD is indeed not solely caused by changes in the brain but instead by changes in the microbiome, then you may just have to get drugs into the gut to help patients, which is much easier to do," Mazmanian says. Such drugs could be designed to modulate SCFA levels, deliver beneficial probiotics, or remove harmful organisms. "This new concept may lead to safer therapies with fewer side effects compared to current treatments."
I think you are right. That makes you a pessimist. For sure pharma's are interested in profit not philanthropy. I think you extend that basic premise a bit far.
There was a paywall on the article but pharma's can't patent poo. Any more than they can patent Mucuna or the rest of the massive alternative market.
Remember every failed trial we read about is a frustration for us. And millions of dollars of pure loss for the pharma investing in it. They do that to find the one that works and make money from it.
They do that by patent protection for a finite period after which generics slash the profit margins and "little pharma" step into make regular sized profits from regular regulated manufacturing.
A miracle cure for PD would have a small impact on MSD profits now sinemet is out of patent.
Big pharma will move on to look for new cures,accepting new pure losses on failed trials in the hope of getting a new 17 year bite at a breakthrough drug.
Meantime poo needs to be regulated and screened like transplant material to ensure it doesn't cause harm
Greed is already in play in FMT and they don't even know if FMT will work for the purpose yet! Here is quote from the article which pretty much sums up how much greed :
“An obscene amount of money is being thrown around by companies trying to profit off of what nature made,” said Dr. Khoruts. “I don’t think there are clear villains here, but I worry that the regulators are not caught up on the latest science and that the interests of investors may be exceeding those of patients.”
That quote may or may not be correct. All one can say with confidence is that it uses melodramatic language and offers no corrobatory support.
"Obscene" amounts of money are invested in developing the next model of car. Poo transplants require a clinic and screening lab, but thereafter have any profits determined by supply and demand.
This therapy won't be delivered by writing about it on a forum. Like our food we eat and clothes we wear it will be delivered by someone looking to earn a living
If you open the New York Times link in a private window, you should be able to read it. That will give you context about the quote.
It's not that money is being invested in FMT, it's that they're trying to make it patentable so that they can charge much higher rates and have exclusive control.
Fecal transplant therapy is already being delivered by a nonprofit called OpenBiome.
"Over the past decade, tens of thousands of Americans with C. diff have been cured through fecal transplants, often with a single dose that can bring patients back from the brink of death. The treatment has more than an 80 percent success rate, according to several studies, and many patients feel better within hours of receiving the procedure, which is usually administered through colonoscopy or capsules containing desiccated fecal matter."
Yes, moving the technology forward would be great. Paying people who do that is fine. But medical patents can have people over a barrel. They raised the price of EpiPen's to $600. Insulin costs have skyrocketed. Is the same going to happen with FMT?
youtube.com/watch?v=RRN3d5S...
~
“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask
Analyst report notes that Gilead’s hep C cure will make less than $4 billion this year.
arstechnica.com/tech-policy...
Rhyothemis,
Chris Rock said it right....."ain't no money in cures"! I guess he should have said , "ain't enough money in cures"! Pharmaceutical companies are there to make as much money as possible and when that is your mission and bottom line, there have been no recent cures except for Harvoni and there are none on the horizon! What a complete surprise! Since Harvoni has not produced as much profit as treating the symptoms for life would have, the lesson has been learned, only treat symptoms, its more profitable!
Art
As Cenk Uygur has pointed out, a publicly-traded company is legally required to maximize profits - it's a feature, not a bug.
What I don't understand is that in countries with more fully socialized health care*, more is not done to find cures or at least low-cost treatments.
~
* Health care costs always wind up being socialized to some extent. We all wind up paying, one way or another. As it is, US taxpayers pay the bulk of the costs for the basic science research that leads to drug development - we've already invested quite a bit up front. Personally, I am in favor of spending on basic science research. I can't think of a better way to employ people in fulfilling careers that bring benefit to society - though equal to it may be support of the arts. Instead we devote an inordinate amount of resources to trivial, wasteful and often destructive pursuits.
Profit over People
Especially true in chemo
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