Sorry if I have trouble hating the same people who kept me from offing myself last winter. Like Churba said, for every 1 person who gets dicked over by pharma companies, at least 5000 are helped by them.
I sure do love not putting out matches on my arms just to feel any other pain and not spending entire afternoons locked in vertigo-inducing suicidal ideation and insomnia, but I sure do hate corruption!
Sorry if I have trouble hating the same people who kept me from offing myself last winter. Like Churba said, for every 1 person who gets dicked over by pharma companies, at least 5000 are helped by them.
I sure do love not putting out matches on my arms just to feel any other pain and not spending entire afternoons locked in vertigo-inducing suicidal ideation and insomnia, but I sure do hate corruption!
Too bad corruption is a required component of medical research, development, patenting, production, and distribution!
I'm not a loon here, guys. I work in a hospital. I see people denied treatments for all sorts of immoral, money-driven reasons. My wife works in a hospital with psychiatric patients and you probably wouldn't even BELIEVE the shit that goes down on that side of things. Maybe you're young and optimistic, I dunno.
I'm not calling for the abolition of medical research and science, I'm saying that the pharmaceutical industry has a pretty significant and frightening dark side that needs to be addressed just as badly as illegal drug cartels. Why this is so controversial, I can't see.
My daughter and I would both be dead if not for recently developed, advanced medications, so these snide remarks about how pharma saved or improved your lives are not news to me nor am I arguing that anybody ought to go without medication on some misguided moral grounds.
Do you think I'm impugning medical researchers, here? Government research grants? I'm not doing either. I have no love for pharma executives. I think they're largely sociopaths and profiteers. If you've got a problem with THAT assertion, well, then let's argue it. :-)
Then disprove it. Don't just call it crap, and run.
Disprove what? You accused me of arguing against the for profit nature of the pharmaceutical industry. I didn't (but could).
Actually, I believe I said that you're not stupid enough to think that they can do what they do for free, after you tried to say that the benefit they provide to the world is canceled out by the fact they made money.
You accused me of making an emotional appeal due to my personal circumstances. I didn't. I mentioned personal anecdotes as relevant examples and I also cited articles from Forbes, TED, and other reputable sources detailing the sort of corruption and graft I'm taking issue with.
Close - I said that your personal feelings are tainting your priorities, re: your opinion that we should focus on big pharma and not the cartels, as big pharma is worse than the cartels - an argument that your citations didn't really prove, despite the fact that most of them were good good isn't the right way to put it - rather, from reputable sources. (The last one, pointing to commondreams, that's a bit dodgy, but 5 outta 6 ain't bad.)
You accused me of claiming that profiting from providing a service counters the good of providing the service. I did not.
Yeah, you kinda did. Or was it someone else that said " I don't think the good that is incidentally done as they rake in billions of dollars is a good counter for that[the harm they do]"?
Not to mention that the argument you made severely begs the fucking question that the good they do is incidental and not a primary focus - sure, they sell their product, but as Greg pointed out, their product is the tools used in helping people and improving health, and if it was merely a happy coincidence, then they don't actually have a product to sell to make all that money.
What specifically did you want me to address that you feel I have not addressed?
Actually refuting my argument would be a good start. Or maybe justifying the position that the cartels should be ignored, and big pharma dealt with instead.
And before you say "Oh, I didn't say that", I'll save time by saying bullshit you didn't now, and remind you of your own words - "The cartels can keep on cutting off heads as far as I'm concerned until we've addressed far more powerful, far more dangerous players like GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer. "
Actually, I believe I said that you're not stupid enough to think that they can do what they do for free, after you tried to say that the benefit they provide to the world is canceled out by the fact they made money.
Show me where I said that. Your examples shows me saying basically the converse... well that's not the right word, but sort of the converse of that. What I said was, all the good they've done doesn't excuse the evils they've perpetrated. That's not a statement that's true when reversed, and the reverse isn't what I said. You're twisting what I said.
Actually refuting my argument would be a good start. Or maybe justifying the position that the cartels should be ignored, and big pharma dealt with instead.
And before you say "Oh, I didn't say that", I'll save time by saying bullshit you didn't now, and remind you of your own words - "The cartels can keep on cutting off heads as far as I'm concerned until we've addressed far more powerful, far more dangerous players like GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer.
With respect, I think you need to clarify your argument. I saw a bunch of assertions regarding my argument, which I've addressed. What exactly is your argument?
If we can only go after one or the other, yes I stand by my assertion that corrupt big pharma practices are far more dangerous and injurious to society and on a grander scale than the relatively penny-ante shit the Mexican cartels are perpetrating. That doesn't mean "Abolish the pharmaceutical industry" and it doesn't mean "Gosh, I love the cartels they provide a valuable service and should get free doughnuts." It means "Let's route out the injurious bullshit that is harming people who are left with little to no recourse when the pharma company, healthcare provider, and insurer get through with them in our fucking broken healthcare industry. "
For example, the cost of my emergency asthma inhalers tripled a few years back when, as part of the Kyoto protocol, the old CFC propellants had to be removed and replaced with a new form of propellant. For this change, the drug company was allowed a fresh, shiny new patent which removed all generics from the market for a period of.. what.. 8 years? On a drug that has had inexpensive generics for over two decades, much to the benefit of low income asthma sufferers. Me, I can afford the tripled price. My grandma? Maybe not. This effects hundreds of thousands or millions of people and, sorry, I consider this more damaging than 7 heads in a cooler, even though the latter is more horrific on a visceral level.
I have a feeling that certain people in this thread may be conflating my argument with anti-intellectualism, anti-science, I dunno what, but that makes more sense than what appears to be 3 intelligent people defending damaging--in terms of life and death--corrupt practices as long as the perpetrator also provides a large benefit to society.
And, to get back to the genesis of this long, dragged out slap fight, the initial assertion was that I think it's a bad idea to give exclusive control of addictive substances to for profit corporations with a track record of cynical anti-competitive and profit-maximizing practices at the expense of human life and health, however well balanced those scandals may be by societal benefit.
If we're talking mom & pop dispensaries, we're all good.
Addressing a purely hypothetical (but likely) scenario, I said that nothing good can come of allowing big pharma to patent the only FDA approved marijuana strain. This elicited much frothing and gnashing of teeth. To that I can only say: whatever, guys. Philip Morris would love you.
(mup, you do realize there's an edit feature, right?)
I use it when I remember. :-P
I get gunshy about editing when it's been 5 or 10 minutes and I suspect the other participants may already be responding. It's cumbersome to scroll back up, look for edits, and update responses a quarter hour after the fact, or worse, to have an addendum missed by others at which point you've got to go ahead and restate it anyway.
Show me where I said that. Your examples shows me saying basically the converse... well that's not the right word, but sort of the converse of that. What I said was, all the good they've done doesn't excuse the evils they've perpetrated. That's not a statement that's true when reversed, and the reverse isn't what I said. You're twisting what I said.
I point that out in literally the next paragraph. If that's not what you intended, then I would have suggested putting it differently.
With respect, I think you need to clarify your argument. I saw a bunch of assertions regarding my argument, which I've addressed. What exactly is your argument?
Sure - You said, again, that the cartels can behead people for all you care, because the drug companies are more evil, and need to be dealt with first, if you don't mind me paraphrasing slightly.
My argument is that this is not the case, because the Drug companies have both good and evil on the scale in roughly equal measure, an argument that cannot be made for the cartels.
If we can only go after one or the other, yes I stand by my assertion that corrupt big pharma practices are far more dangerous and injurious to society and on a grander scale than the relatively penny-ante shit the Mexican cartels are perpetrating. That doesn't mean "Abolish the pharmaceutical industry" and it doesn't mean "Gosh, I love the cartels they provide a valuable service and should get free doughnuts." It means "Let's route out the injurious bullshit that is harming people who are left with little to no recourse when the pharma company, healthcare provider, and insurer get through with them in our fucking broken healthcare industry. "
I think that's a bit of an odd argument to make. You have a legal recourse. If that is not availiable to all people, that's a failing of the legal system and/or lawyers, not the drug companies. Second, I don't think you grasp the scale of the Mexican drug cartels - we're talking billions of dollars, just like Big Pharma.
Third, we're talking about vastly different types of action, here - the cartels, in our current system, can only be stomped out. Drug companies, on the other hand, do at least make an effort to stay within the law, and thus, can be controlled with regulation and the rule of law, unlike the cartels - and stomping them out would have a far more deleterious effect than stomping out a cartel. It's not an either or preposition, in reality, it's a case of Apples and top-fuel dragsters.
For example, the cost of my emergency asthma inhalers tripled a few years back when, as part of the Kyoto protocol, the old CFC propellants had to be removed and replaced with a new form of propellant. For this change, the drug company was allowed a fresh, shiny new patent which removed all generics from the market for a period of.. what.. 8 years? On a drug that has had inexpensive generics for over two decades, much to the benefit of low income asthma sufferers. Me, I can afford the tripled price. My grandma? Maybe not. This effects hundreds of thousands or millions of people and, sorry, I consider this more damaging than 7 heads in a cooler, even though the latter is more horrific on a visceral level.
You know, I'm not sure that's the drug companies. Prices on Asthma inhalers has been relatively steady for a long time, here, along with many other medications.
I have a feeling that certain people in this thread may be conflating my argument with anti-intellectualism, anti-science, I dunno what, but that makes more sense than what appears to be 3 intelligent people defending damaging--in terms of life and death--corrupt practices as long as the perpetrator also provides a large benefit to society.
In order - No, no, I don't know either, and nice try but no cigar, because nobody is fucking doing any such thing. What people are arguing is that the drug companies do more good than the mexican drug cartels, because everybody thinks you're arguing otherwise, and I'll be honest, you were pretty clear on that point.
Quite frankly if you think my argument is that Mexican drug cartels do more good than the US pharmaceutical industry, then you have severe reading comprehension deficits. That's ridiculous.
You know, I'm not sure that's the drug companies. Prices on Asthma inhalers has been relatively steady for a long time, here, along with many other medications.
Are US drug patents enforceable in Australia? I have no idea. Also, MANY US-developed drugs are cheaper outside of the US.
As for legal recourse, the drug companies in the US have a long and storied history of complicating the legal process for injured individuals through lobbying and just simply having massive resources at their disposal when a case actually does go to trial. But this is tangential to the argument anyway.
Sure - You said, again, that the cartels can behead people for all you care, because the drug companies are more evil, and need to be dealt with first, if you don't mind me paraphrasing slightly.
Sure, if you don't mind me parahprasing your argument as "Drug companies can kill cancer patients with a signature so long as at least some people get medicine based on arbitrary criteria." See? Paraphrasing sort of derails things.
Drug companies, on the other hand, do at least make an effort to stay within the law, and thus, can be controlled with regulation and the rule of law, unlike the cartels
Well, except that I'd phrase it a little differently. Drug companies use high priced lawyers and lobbyists to twist the law around their fingers, create de-facto monopolies and anti-competitive loopholes, and play a huge role in making the US one of the most inefficient and ineffective among first world countries in terms of dollars spent vs actual healthcare outcomes.
And I've stated at LEAST twice that I'm not advocating for "stomping out" or otherwise dismantling drug companies, so it's really disingenuous, to put it kindly, that you keep hammering on that point as if it's one I'm making.
Seriously, I don't think I'm being all that ambiguous. You seem to be making a sport out of twisting my arguments and subjecting them to a pretty liberal degree of interpretation. I'm not sure what the point of a discussion is in that manner, so, I give up.
Quite frankly if you think my argument is that Mexican drug cartels do more good than the US pharmaceutical industry, then you have severe reading comprehension deficits. That's ridiculous.
The dramatic irony of you accusing everyone else of lacking reading comprehension, before utterly fucking up the broadest, easiest version of everyone's argument so enormously that you're either taking the piss or just genuinely not reading a damned thing anyone is saying is not lost on anyone. Read carefully -
You said : Drug companies are worse than the Mexican cartels.
Everyone else said : No, they're not, they're no angels, but they a)do good, and b) don't openly massacre large amounts of people for trival reasons, and produce a product that often kills people.
I'm sorry if that's inconvenient for you, but that's the fact of the matter. Nobody is saying whatever mad shit you keep inventing, because fuck I don't even know why you're doing it, it doesn't make a lick of sense.
Are US drug patents enforceable in Australia? I have no idea. Also, MANY US-developed drugs are cheaper outside of the US.
Ask a Lawyer. But I'd think that might not be relevant, considering that I've no doubt that a giant, multinational corporation has the basic foresight to patent their drugs in more than one place, if they have to. You don't get to be giant and multinational by being stupid.
Sure, if you don't mind me parahprasing your argument as "Drug companies can kill cancer patients with a signature so long as at least some people get medicine based on arbitrary criteria." See? Paraphrasing sort of derails things.
So you deny that my depiction of your argument - despite you pretty much saying all of those things so far - is inaccurate? Then pray fucking tell, precisely what are you saying, if you're not actually saying what you've bloody well been saying all along?
Oh, and by the way? No, that is not acceptable, because your paraphrasing is not accurate in spirit nor intent nor content. You can try again, or you can stop making up emotional bollocks to try and score points, either is fine. I'll warn you, though, if you're going with the latter, that's really not how you should be mugging for the audience to win them, even if you could win an argument like this with such brutally obvious appeals to emotion - which you can't, especially here. If you're even going to try, at least learn some subtlety, christ.
And I've stated at LEAST twice that I'm not advocating for "stomping out" or otherwise dismantling drug companies, so it's really disingenuous, to put it kindly, that you keep hammering on that point as if it's one I'm making.
Then you've literally argued yourself to a standstill. By your own argument, drug companies twist the law around their fingers to do as they wish within the law. The government must stay within the law when going after them, but they should focus more effort on...doing what, exactly? Going after them when they don't break the law? They already get punished when they do break the law, and there isn't much else you can do about it - since, if they have the law twisted around their finger, how are you going to do a fucking thing about restricting their activities, or giving anyone legal recourse beyond what they have available?
And, obviously, the action to be taken against the cartels is completely different. To the point where even "The cartels can cut off as many heads as they like, we should be doing something about the drug companies" is a foolish and ill-considered statement, because they've nothing to do with each other. It's like saying to a mango farmer that the fruit-bats can take all the mangos for all you care, because we need to launch another space shuttle. Great, yeah, okay, what the fuck do they even have to do with each other? How is one taking focus from the other? How do they relate at all, except for the tenuous idea of both being in the drug business, or in the fictional farmer example, the business of flying?
Tell me, what precisely do you want? The DEA kicking in GSK's doors and arresting them for not actually breaking any laws within their jurisdiction? The FDA to knock politely on Juan Big Lodaheroin's door holding a polite letter that they'd like to check their product before it's sold on the US market?
You're arguing you want them to do one thing, then making a different argument on another point that means the first thing is impossible. Your argument is not internally consistent.
And No, I already know that's not exactly to the letter what you said, but I'm trying to figure out exactly what you're trying to say now, since apparently you didn't say what you said except when you did or did not. Your argument is utterly impenetrable at this point, but I don't mean in the sense that it's impossible to defeat, I mean in the sense that it's just incomprehensible. It's not even about reading comprehension, because at this point, the more I read, the less and less I know what you're on about.
I said a very simple thing. I said I don't think giving sole rights to the manufacture and distribution of highly addictive substances to for profit companies is a good idea. From there came WUB's assertion that it's better than drug cartels distributing them. I said I'm not sure which is worse, which everyone apparently took to mean "pharmaceutical companies do absolutely no good and shouldn't exist" rather than "corruption in key healthcare industries is as damaging as gangs and just as bad."
I haven't been inconsistent anywhere. Your interpretation of what I've posted has been a product of some sort of odd projection or baggage brought in from outside this discussion, which I can't help.
Reform of the pharma industry doesn't mean burning down factories and hanging executives. You're being just a *tad* melodramatic about my comments, along with basically everybody else in this thread.
The only reason for even comparing cartels to pharma companies was in response to WUB's statement waaaaaaaay back a million posts ago. I have never once argued that gang violence should be ignored, just that I don't think it should have special priority or status over corruption in an industry that kills or harms at least as many people and, much more likely, kills or harms far *more* people and that the latter is really no better than the former in terms of societal harm.
So, I didn't draw the parallel. And I agree, the choices for legalization are not "let the cartels provide it or let megacorporations provide it." Obviously the states in the states in the US that have legalized despite federal laws thus far are doing neither.
45,000--possibly 90,000 depending on who you listen to--deaths related to Mexican drug war (of which some fraction are the work of cartels) in a 3 year period.
45,000 people dead in the US per year because they cannot afford either medical treatment, or medication.
So, it's difficult or impossible to draw a direct line between deaths caused by the cost of medication (and an implied failure to provide medication to those who need it) and deaths caused by Mexican drug cartels, but damn, the numbers do seem to imply more deaths occur as a result of the former.
And, this should be obvious, but you DO realize that the good done by pharma companies and the failings/corruption of pharma companies are discrete quantities that can be discussed independently, right?
This whole discussion started when it was suggested that pharma companies would simply make profits off of legalized addictive, recreational drugs, with an odd parallel drawn to drug cartels. I suggested that their track record makes me worry about creating a new Philip Morris, only worse, and then I ran with the cartel comparison because I found it academically interesting and indeed, health industry practices in the US actually DO, as a whole, cause more deaths than Mexican drug gangs by as much as a factor of two.
45,000--possibly 90,000 depending on who you listen to--deaths related to Mexican drug war (of which some fraction are the work of cartels) in a 3 year period.
45,000--possibly 90,000 depending on who you listen to--deaths related to Mexican drug war (of which some fraction are the work of cartels) in a 3 year period.
45,000 people dead in the US per year because they cannot afford either medical treatment, or medication.
The exact same number? So not being able to afford treatment = Mexican drug war?
Note to self: Good name for a video game: "Mexican Drug War".
Actually it's not the exact same number. If you look at the time periods for the statistics, lack of adequate healthcare in the US causes up to 3 times as many deaths as the Mexican drug war per year.
Actually it's not the exact same number. If you look at the time periods for the statistics, lack of adequate healthcare in the US causes up to 3 times as many deaths as the Mexican drug war per year.
Yes, but you can't solely blame big pharma for all those deaths either. For one thing, a fair number of the big pharma companies at least claim to have programs to assist people in purchasing medication that they can't afford. Second, not all those deaths are related to lacking medication. If you need a heart transplant, no amount of medication is going to save your life -- only the expensive surgery to perform the actual transplant will do. Finally, the lack of universal healthcare is probably the biggest contribution to the death rate due to inability to afford medical treatment. Many of the big pharma companies (Bayer is the biggest example, although there are a few others I can't remember offhand) are in fact based in countries that have universal health care and they don't have these problems because they have universal health care to cover the cost of treatment and medication.
Second, big pharma, as expensive as it is, does need the money to finance the R&D necessary to come up with the new treatments. However, on the other hand, because medications can only be patented and not copyrighted, they're limited to at most 20 years to recoup their investment on the R&D needed to create the medications. Now, I'll give you that some of the patents (like many patents in general) they come up may be BS... and I'd also agree that if any research was conducted using tax-payer funds then the patent period should either be reduced or eliminated entirely, but hey, they gotta earn a buck at least for their scientists and technicians laboring in their labs to come up with the stuff.
Third, big pharma probably would have no influence at all on legalized LSD, etc. Why? Because the chemical formulas for all these illegal drugs are in the public domain. That means that anyone with a suitable lab can reproduce them, legally. Most of big pharma's money comes from periods where they have successful drugs that they still own patents to. Once the patents expire and generics come on the market, the prices get seriously reduced. When it comes to things like legal LSD, you'll probably be able to get it relatively cheap since, if there's money to be had, every generic company on the planet will be making that stuff. You can probably just walk into your favorite drug store and buy store-brand LSD fairly cheap if you really wanted to.
No, you can't blame big pharma for all those deaths. I said as much when I linked the articles and I further carefully used the more general "healthcare industry" in subsequent comments.
Still, insane medication prices are a rampant problem. I've been working in either insurance or healthcare for 15 years now, in IT granted, but I worked on actuarial systems, underwriting, policy administration, logistics...
does need the money to finance the R&D necessary to come up with the new treatments.
I think the cash needed and used for actual research is poorly quantified and subject to massive fudging, but yes, undoubtedly, they need research money. It would be nice if social utility weighed more heavily than projected profits, especially when tax money makes up a large percentage of the grants received.
Lastly, public domain can easily be skirted with a little corporate friendly regulation ESPECIALLY if they can scream "For safety! For the children!" loud enough and in the case of currently illegal drugs, this road is already paved for them. That was pretty much the entire crux of my statement way back a bojillion posts ago.
No, you can't blame big pharma for all those deaths. I said as much when I linked the articles and I further carefully used the more general "healthcare industry" in subsequent comments.
However, you seem to be railing specifically on big pharma in most of your posts on this topic.
No, you can't blame big pharma for all those deaths. I said as much when I linked the articles and I further carefully used the more general "healthcare industry" in subsequent comments.
However, you seem to be railing specifically on big pharma in most of your posts on this topic.
Absolutely which is why I carefully qualified the numbers I posted and said flat out there wasn't a direct comparison.
No, you can't blame big pharma for all those deaths. I said as much when I linked the articles and I further carefully used the more general "healthcare industry" in subsequent comments.
However, you seem to be railing specifically on big pharma in most of your posts on this topic.
Absolutely which is why I carefully qualified the numbers I posted and said flat out there wasn't a direct comparison.
True, I missed that part of your post, and I apologize. However, I still disagree with your stance that the HC industry in the US is more evil (or just as evil) than the cartels. The major difference is that the cartels are actively going out and killing people who get in their way. Healthcare in the US, on the other hand, isn't going out and murdering people. At best, HC can be considered guilty of the crime of indifference, and I'm not even sure how much of that can be blamed on the industry itself. Healthcare is not free, after all -- someone has to pay for the doctors, the diagnostic equipment, the medications, the R&D behind all the treatments, and so on. Going towards universal healthcare (which is something that the front-lines of the HC industry in the US, such as doctors, nurses, etc., is in favor for) is the only solution for that as it provides a way to pool the expenses together.
For some reason I feel like putting in my 2 cents, even though it'll either be ignored in this wall of posts, or be violently attacked. :-P I know you guys are arguing several different points but I'll only touch on one.
I sympathize with muppet here. He's obviously had a lot of bad things happen related to medication that most of us haven't had. I agree that when a company is purely motivated by profit, bad things happen. I mean really guys, why is it so bad to out big pharma for knowingly hiding bad things about their drugs? What's wrong with wanting them to have honest practices? Nobody should be hurt because the company is hiding some danger about their drug. They hide stuff because they don't want people avoiding their drug, resulting in less money. Obviously not ALL drug companies are like this, not EVERY employee is out for money, etc etc. But implying they're not bad and should carry on because there is some other group chopping off people's heads...wow.
Yes so many lives are saved from drugs. I love drugs! They make my tummy feel better and keep be from having unwanted babies! At the same time, its NOT okay to engage in deceptive practices to add another million to some CEO's salary. Just freaking disclose everything about your drugs so people can make informed decisions, jeebus.
Anti-competitive practices and aggressive and immoral use of drug patents at the cost of lives cannot be defended.
Except in the case where it's allow drug patents or everybody dies. Black and white morality does not apply in this case.
Let's say a drug company isn't allowed to get a patent on a new lifesaving drug that can save, oh, 1 million people a year, and that costs $1 million in R&D costs to develop. Let's say that only 10% of the people that the drug could save can afford the medication at the price that will recoup the R&D costs plus a reasonable profit during the patent period. So, if the drug is developed and put on the market, that means 100,000 people are saved and 900,000 people die. On the other hand, if you can't make money on the drug or even recoup its R&D costs, it never gets developed, so 1 million people die. 900,000 people dying is still less bad than 1 million people dying. Oh, and that's also only for the first 20 years. Let's say after the patents expire, the generic version of the drug is so cheap that everyone can afford it. So let's do some math:
If the drug is never developed due to the developer never being able to recoup his/her costs, then 1 million people a year die forever. Over 100 years, that results in 100 million people dying.
If the drug is developed, then 18 million people die over the first 20 years, but no one dies after that. So over 100 years, that results in 18 million people dying.
I'll take the latter number, thank you.
You're also ignoring that, even without R&D costs, sometimes the drugs themselves are expensive to manufacture due to the high cost of the necessary ingredients. I forget the exact drug (taxil, maybe?), but there is one very powerful anti-cancer drug that, barring some way to produce a synthetic alternative, will always remain expensive since one of its key ingredients comes from a very rare species of yew tree. So therefore, even generic forms of this drug will always remain expensive because the materials necessary to produce it are so expensive to begin with.
At the same time, its NOT okay to engage in deceptive practices to add another million to some CEO's salary. Just freaking disclose everything about your drugs so people can make informed decisions, jeebus.
Oh, I agree completely with this. I'm fine with drug companies making money purely for recouping R&D costs and to make a reasonable profit. However, I am completely against fraudulent claims and hiding potentially dangerous side effects, complications, etc., of the drugs in order to pad said profit. That is outright fraud and anyone involved in perpetrating said fraud should be criminally punished and sent to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
I think that there is an awful lot of padding in research budgets, to the tune of $600 toilet seats on Air Force One, and that bullshit is passed onto patients who work labor jobs and have 5 kids, and that's fucking wrong. I tend to believe that drug patents are not so much guaranteeing resources for research as they are guaranteeing the flexibility for this sort of graft and siphoning.
What the fix is, I don't know. Auditors of auditors of auditors.
I think that there is an awful lot of padding in research budgets, to the tune of $600 toilet seats on Air Force One, and that bullshit is passed onto patients who work labor jobs and have 5 kids, and that's fucking wrong. I tend to believe that drug patents are not so much guaranteeing resources for research as they are guaranteeing the flexibility for this sort of graft and siphoning.
You have no idea what it takes to create a new drug, do you?
$600 toilet seats come about when small quantities of a non standard item are ordered. Mass produced items are cheaper to produce in part because the initial production cost is spread out. When you only want a few of a given item produced each item has to cover a larger percent of the base manufacturing cost.
I think that there is an awful lot of padding in research budgets, to the tune of $600 toilet seats on Air Force One, and that bullshit is passed onto patients who work labor jobs and have 5 kids, and that's fucking wrong. I tend to believe that drug patents are not so much guaranteeing resources for research as they are guaranteeing the flexibility for this sort of graft and siphoning.
You have no idea what it takes to create a new drug, do you?
I wouldn't say NO idea. I understand the search for drug targets like proteins or genes or enzymes, etc. I understand thousands of incrementally different but ultimately dead-end trials. I get all of that.
Yet somehow I'm not encouraged by guys owning 7 homes and driving around in Ferraris who do not much but find ways to prevent competitors from eating their cake.
Comments
I'm not a loon here, guys. I work in a hospital. I see people denied treatments for all sorts of immoral, money-driven reasons. My wife works in a hospital with psychiatric patients and you probably wouldn't even BELIEVE the shit that goes down on that side of things. Maybe you're young and optimistic, I dunno.
I'm not calling for the abolition of medical research and science, I'm saying that the pharmaceutical industry has a pretty significant and frightening dark side that needs to be addressed just as badly as illegal drug cartels. Why this is so controversial, I can't see.
My daughter and I would both be dead if not for recently developed, advanced medications, so these snide remarks about how pharma saved or improved your lives are not news to me nor am I arguing that anybody ought to go without medication on some misguided moral grounds.
Do you think I'm impugning medical researchers, here? Government research grants? I'm not doing either. I have no love for pharma executives. I think they're largely sociopaths and profiteers. If you've got a problem with THAT assertion, well, then let's argue it. :-)
Not to mention that the argument you made severely begs the fucking question that the good they do is incidental and not a primary focus - sure, they sell their product, but as Greg pointed out, their product is the tools used in helping people and improving health, and if it was merely a happy coincidence, then they don't actually have a product to sell to make all that money. Actually refuting my argument would be a good start. Or maybe justifying the position that the cartels should be ignored, and big pharma dealt with instead.
And before you say "Oh, I didn't say that", I'll save time by saying bullshit you didn't now, and remind you of your own words - "The cartels can keep on cutting off heads as far as I'm concerned until we've addressed far more powerful, far more dangerous players like GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer. "
If we can only go after one or the other, yes I stand by my assertion that corrupt big pharma practices are far more dangerous and injurious to society and on a grander scale than the relatively penny-ante shit the Mexican cartels are perpetrating. That doesn't mean "Abolish the pharmaceutical industry" and it doesn't mean "Gosh, I love the cartels they provide a valuable service and should get free doughnuts." It means "Let's route out the injurious bullshit that is harming people who are left with little to no recourse when the pharma company, healthcare provider, and insurer get through with them in our fucking broken healthcare industry. "
For example, the cost of my emergency asthma inhalers tripled a few years back when, as part of the Kyoto protocol, the old CFC propellants had to be removed and replaced with a new form of propellant. For this change, the drug company was allowed a fresh, shiny new patent which removed all generics from the market for a period of.. what.. 8 years? On a drug that has had inexpensive generics for over two decades, much to the benefit of low income asthma sufferers. Me, I can afford the tripled price. My grandma? Maybe not. This effects hundreds of thousands or millions of people and, sorry, I consider this more damaging than 7 heads in a cooler, even though the latter is more horrific on a visceral level.
I have a feeling that certain people in this thread may be conflating my argument with anti-intellectualism, anti-science, I dunno what, but that makes more sense than what appears to be 3 intelligent people defending damaging--in terms of life and death--corrupt practices as long as the perpetrator also provides a large benefit to society.
If we're talking mom & pop dispensaries, we're all good.
Addressing a purely hypothetical (but likely) scenario, I said that nothing good can come of allowing big pharma to patent the only FDA approved marijuana strain. This elicited much frothing and gnashing of teeth. To that I can only say: whatever, guys. Philip Morris would love you.
I get gunshy about editing when it's been 5 or 10 minutes and I suspect the other participants may already be responding. It's cumbersome to scroll back up, look for edits, and update responses a quarter hour after the fact, or worse, to have an addendum missed by others at which point you've got to go ahead and restate it anyway.
My argument is that this is not the case, because the Drug companies have both good and evil on the scale in roughly equal measure, an argument that cannot be made for the cartels. I think that's a bit of an odd argument to make. You have a legal recourse. If that is not availiable to all people, that's a failing of the legal system and/or lawyers, not the drug companies. Second, I don't think you grasp the scale of the Mexican drug cartels - we're talking billions of dollars, just like Big Pharma.
Third, we're talking about vastly different types of action, here - the cartels, in our current system, can only be stomped out. Drug companies, on the other hand, do at least make an effort to stay within the law, and thus, can be controlled with regulation and the rule of law, unlike the cartels - and stomping them out would have a far more deleterious effect than stomping out a cartel. It's not an either or preposition, in reality, it's a case of Apples and top-fuel dragsters. You know, I'm not sure that's the drug companies. Prices on Asthma inhalers has been relatively steady for a long time, here, along with many other medications. In order - No, no, I don't know either, and nice try but no cigar, because nobody is fucking doing any such thing. What people are arguing is that the drug companies do more good than the mexican drug cartels, because everybody thinks you're arguing otherwise, and I'll be honest, you were pretty clear on that point.
As for legal recourse, the drug companies in the US have a long and storied history of complicating the legal process for injured individuals through lobbying and just simply having massive resources at their disposal when a case actually does go to trial. But this is tangential to the argument anyway. Sure, if you don't mind me parahprasing your argument as "Drug companies can kill cancer patients with a signature so long as at least some people get medicine based on arbitrary criteria." See? Paraphrasing sort of derails things. Well, except that I'd phrase it a little differently. Drug companies use high priced lawyers and lobbyists to twist the law around their fingers, create de-facto monopolies and anti-competitive loopholes, and play a huge role in making the US one of the most inefficient and ineffective among first world countries in terms of dollars spent vs actual healthcare outcomes.
And I've stated at LEAST twice that I'm not advocating for "stomping out" or otherwise dismantling drug companies, so it's really disingenuous, to put it kindly, that you keep hammering on that point as if it's one I'm making.
Seriously, I don't think I'm being all that ambiguous. You seem to be making a sport out of twisting my arguments and subjecting them to a pretty liberal degree of interpretation. I'm not sure what the point of a discussion is in that manner, so, I give up.
You said : Drug companies are worse than the Mexican cartels.
Everyone else said : No, they're not, they're no angels, but they a)do good, and b) don't openly massacre large amounts of people for trival reasons, and produce a product that often kills people.
I'm sorry if that's inconvenient for you, but that's the fact of the matter. Nobody is saying whatever mad shit you keep inventing, because fuck I don't even know why you're doing it, it doesn't make a lick of sense. Ask a Lawyer. But I'd think that might not be relevant, considering that I've no doubt that a giant, multinational corporation has the basic foresight to patent their drugs in more than one place, if they have to. You don't get to be giant and multinational by being stupid. So you deny that my depiction of your argument - despite you pretty much saying all of those things so far - is inaccurate? Then pray fucking tell, precisely what are you saying, if you're not actually saying what you've bloody well been saying all along?
Oh, and by the way? No, that is not acceptable, because your paraphrasing is not accurate in spirit nor intent nor content. You can try again, or you can stop making up emotional bollocks to try and score points, either is fine. I'll warn you, though, if you're going with the latter, that's really not how you should be mugging for the audience to win them, even if you could win an argument like this with such brutally obvious appeals to emotion - which you can't, especially here. If you're even going to try, at least learn some subtlety, christ. Then you've literally argued yourself to a standstill. By your own argument, drug companies twist the law around their fingers to do as they wish within the law. The government must stay within the law when going after them, but they should focus more effort on...doing what, exactly? Going after them when they don't break the law? They already get punished when they do break the law, and there isn't much else you can do about it - since, if they have the law twisted around their finger, how are you going to do a fucking thing about restricting their activities, or giving anyone legal recourse beyond what they have available?
And, obviously, the action to be taken against the cartels is completely different. To the point where even "The cartels can cut off as many heads as they like, we should be doing something about the drug companies" is a foolish and ill-considered statement, because they've nothing to do with each other. It's like saying to a mango farmer that the fruit-bats can take all the mangos for all you care, because we need to launch another space shuttle. Great, yeah, okay, what the fuck do they even have to do with each other? How is one taking focus from the other? How do they relate at all, except for the tenuous idea of both being in the drug business, or in the fictional farmer example, the business of flying?
Tell me, what precisely do you want? The DEA kicking in GSK's doors and arresting them for not actually breaking any laws within their jurisdiction? The FDA to knock politely on Juan Big Lodaheroin's door holding a polite letter that they'd like to check their product before it's sold on the US market?
You're arguing you want them to do one thing, then making a different argument on another point that means the first thing is impossible. Your argument is not internally consistent.
And No, I already know that's not exactly to the letter what you said, but I'm trying to figure out exactly what you're trying to say now, since apparently you didn't say what you said except when you did or did not. Your argument is utterly impenetrable at this point, but I don't mean in the sense that it's impossible to defeat, I mean in the sense that it's just incomprehensible. It's not even about reading comprehension, because at this point, the more I read, the less and less I know what you're on about.
I haven't been inconsistent anywhere. Your interpretation of what I've posted has been a product of some sort of odd projection or baggage brought in from outside this discussion, which I can't help.
Reform of the pharma industry doesn't mean burning down factories and hanging executives. You're being just a *tad* melodramatic about my comments, along with basically everybody else in this thread.
The only reason for even comparing cartels to pharma companies was in response to WUB's statement waaaaaaaay back a million posts ago. I have never once argued that gang violence should be ignored, just that I don't think it should have special priority or status over corruption in an industry that kills or harms at least as many people and, much more likely, kills or harms far *more* people and that the latter is really no better than the former in terms of societal harm.
So, I didn't draw the parallel. And I agree, the choices for legalization are not "let the cartels provide it or let megacorporations provide it." Obviously the states in the states in the US that have legalized despite federal laws thus far are doing neither.
45,000--possibly 90,000 depending on who you listen to--deaths related to Mexican drug war (of which some fraction are the work of cartels) in a 3 year period.
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3feb4d85d77b11ae40378c5fa28f5cfe
45,000 people dead in the US per year because they cannot afford either medical treatment, or medication.
So, it's difficult or impossible to draw a direct line between deaths caused by the cost of medication (and an implied failure to provide medication to those who need it) and deaths caused by Mexican drug cartels, but damn, the numbers do seem to imply more deaths occur as a result of the former.
And, this should be obvious, but you DO realize that the good done by pharma companies and the failings/corruption of pharma companies are discrete quantities that can be discussed independently, right?
This whole discussion started when it was suggested that pharma companies would simply make profits off of legalized addictive, recreational drugs, with an odd parallel drawn to drug cartels. I suggested that their track record makes me worry about creating a new Philip Morris, only worse, and then I ran with the cartel comparison because I found it academically interesting and indeed, health industry practices in the US actually DO, as a whole, cause more deaths than Mexican drug gangs by as much as a factor of two.
Note to self: Good name for a video game: "Mexican Drug War".
Second, big pharma, as expensive as it is, does need the money to finance the R&D necessary to come up with the new treatments. However, on the other hand, because medications can only be patented and not copyrighted, they're limited to at most 20 years to recoup their investment on the R&D needed to create the medications. Now, I'll give you that some of the patents (like many patents in general) they come up may be BS... and I'd also agree that if any research was conducted using tax-payer funds then the patent period should either be reduced or eliminated entirely, but hey, they gotta earn a buck at least for their scientists and technicians laboring in their labs to come up with the stuff.
Third, big pharma probably would have no influence at all on legalized LSD, etc. Why? Because the chemical formulas for all these illegal drugs are in the public domain. That means that anyone with a suitable lab can reproduce them, legally. Most of big pharma's money comes from periods where they have successful drugs that they still own patents to. Once the patents expire and generics come on the market, the prices get seriously reduced. When it comes to things like legal LSD, you'll probably be able to get it relatively cheap since, if there's money to be had, every generic company on the planet will be making that stuff. You can probably just walk into your favorite drug store and buy store-brand LSD fairly cheap if you really wanted to.
Still, insane medication prices are a rampant problem. I've been working in either insurance or healthcare for 15 years now, in IT granted, but I worked on actuarial systems, underwriting, policy administration, logistics... I think the cash needed and used for actual research is poorly quantified and subject to massive fudging, but yes, undoubtedly, they need research money. It would be nice if social utility weighed more heavily than projected profits, especially when tax money makes up a large percentage of the grants received.
Lastly, public domain can easily be skirted with a little corporate friendly regulation ESPECIALLY if they can scream "For safety! For the children!" loud enough and in the case of currently illegal drugs, this road is already paved for them. That was pretty much the entire crux of my statement way back a bojillion posts ago.
The cartels are "worse" in a way because they have no good side at all, but they're still doing less damage globally, in my opinion.
I sympathize with muppet here. He's obviously had a lot of bad things happen related to medication that most of us haven't had. I agree that when a company is purely motivated by profit, bad things happen. I mean really guys, why is it so bad to out big pharma for knowingly hiding bad things about their drugs? What's wrong with wanting them to have honest practices? Nobody should be hurt because the company is hiding some danger about their drug. They hide stuff because they don't want people avoiding their drug, resulting in less money. Obviously not ALL drug companies are like this, not EVERY employee is out for money, etc etc. But implying they're not bad and should carry on because there is some other group chopping off people's heads...wow.
Yes so many lives are saved from drugs. I love drugs! They make my tummy feel better and keep be from having unwanted babies! At the same time, its NOT okay to engage in deceptive practices to add another million to some CEO's salary. Just freaking disclose everything about your drugs so people can make informed decisions, jeebus.
Let's say a drug company isn't allowed to get a patent on a new lifesaving drug that can save, oh, 1 million people a year, and that costs $1 million in R&D costs to develop. Let's say that only 10% of the people that the drug could save can afford the medication at the price that will recoup the R&D costs plus a reasonable profit during the patent period. So, if the drug is developed and put on the market, that means 100,000 people are saved and 900,000 people die. On the other hand, if you can't make money on the drug or even recoup its R&D costs, it never gets developed, so 1 million people die. 900,000 people dying is still less bad than 1 million people dying. Oh, and that's also only for the first 20 years. Let's say after the patents expire, the generic version of the drug is so cheap that everyone can afford it. So let's do some math:
If the drug is never developed due to the developer never being able to recoup his/her costs, then 1 million people a year die forever. Over 100 years, that results in 100 million people dying.
If the drug is developed, then 18 million people die over the first 20 years, but no one dies after that. So over 100 years, that results in 18 million people dying.
I'll take the latter number, thank you.
You're also ignoring that, even without R&D costs, sometimes the drugs themselves are expensive to manufacture due to the high cost of the necessary ingredients. I forget the exact drug (taxil, maybe?), but there is one very powerful anti-cancer drug that, barring some way to produce a synthetic alternative, will always remain expensive since one of its key ingredients comes from a very rare species of yew tree. So therefore, even generic forms of this drug will always remain expensive because the materials necessary to produce it are so expensive to begin with.
Oh, I agree completely with this. I'm fine with drug companies making money purely for recouping R&D costs and to make a reasonable profit. However, I am completely against fraudulent claims and hiding potentially dangerous side effects, complications, etc., of the drugs in order to pad said profit. That is outright fraud and anyone involved in perpetrating said fraud should be criminally punished and sent to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
What the fix is, I don't know. Auditors of auditors of auditors.
Yet somehow I'm not encouraged by guys owning 7 homes and driving around in Ferraris who do not much but find ways to prevent competitors from eating their cake.