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0 pointsahoyhere15y ago0 comments

The best health advances of all time were developed by passionate, and sometimes uneducated, volunteers -- people who were not working for a profit motive, but for a good-of-all motive. Case in point: the discoverer of penicillin, and the inventor of the vaccine, the inventor of the public blood bank, and on, and on, and on.

Inventing then was (arguably) less costly and technical than it is now, because those were low-hanging fruit. A lot of the low-hanging fruit has probably been discovered by now, though we can't be sure, meaning that future research aims at higher-hanging fruit and so, metaphorically, the would-be inventors need ladders.

These people need help, not profit, because profit isn't what motivates them anyway.

EDIT: Let's not forget public health reform can save more lives than just about anything else (thank you Oliver Wendel Holmes/Ignaz Semmelweis http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/hand_background.ph..., Sara Josephine Baker, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Josephine_Baker and their present day equivalent, Atul Gawande).

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_delirium15y ago

Somehow it seems that the profit motive in pharmaceuticals motivates good science, but targeted at relatively strange things. "Lifestyle" drugs are huge: everyone wants the next Viagra, basically. Perhaps not surprising, because recreational drugs have always been popular, and the "fluff" end of legal pharmaceutical development is the part that sort of bleeds into recreational, since it tends to target something closer to "enhancing" the lives of already fairly healthy people with money, rather than "treating" the ill.

prodigal_erik15y ago

Viagra was discovered by accident (it was a heart medicine that didn't work out). And I've never understood why it's sneered at. Are there really that many people out there who could face no sex again ever and shrug it off? I think that would be utterly soul-crushing, worse than most of the diseases they have charity walks and telethons for.

ahoyhereOP15y ago

They don't rant about it because it solves a truly-no-sex scenario, but because it's essentially a recreational drug for the majority of users.

I think the ability to have sex is at least as important as the ability to not piss yourself (e.g. incontinence medication) if not more, but still, its profit center comes from its recreational use. That's why the drug companies love it.

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ahoyhereOP15y ago

Yes, exactly: if pharma is good business, and not philanthropy, then they have to focus on the people who will pay the most, the most readily, and the most often. End of story.

Case in point: I'm an American who lives in Vienna, Austria, and I have recurring upper-respiratory/immune system problems.

Here, I am treated with a so-cheap-it's-almost-free immune system booster called Broncho Vaxom. It's nothing but dead bacteria, but it's extremely effective (essentially an oral vaccine).

It's used to save lives of children in the poorest of nations -- but it's not available in the US, because it's not profitable, whereas continuous rounds of antibiotics are.

http://www.google.com/search?q=broncho%20vaxom

Vivtek15y ago

Coral snake antivenom is a similar thing - the last manufacturer left a supply of a few years that is now running out, but the process for approving a new manufacturer for the same drug is so expensive that the market won't support it.

So first responders in Florida have a problem. No coral snake antivenom.

A similar market situation applies to flu shots.

The current system favors "maintenance pharmaceuticals", not cures. Who wouldn't prefer to have a cash cow that costs the customer a few hundred dollars every month for the rest of their life, in comparison with something that actually cured them? A cure isn't very lucrative at all.

Generally, free marketeers protest that this isn't true, in the face of all evidence I can see, but look at the business logic; it's inescapable.

1 more reply

stretchwithme15y ago

what people need is the freedom to act and create. government, especially when it takes by force from some to give to others for whatever purpose, distorts the decisions people make

and, as its activities destroy capital, government delays innovation. its easy to point to the things governments have achieved. what the people would have achieved had they been freer is not so easily pointed out.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsahoyhere15y ago0 comments

These people need help, not profit, because profit isn't what motivates them anyway.

0 comments

_delirium15y ago

prodigal_erik15y ago

ahoyhereOP15y ago

They don't rant about it because it solves a truly-no-sex scenario, but because it's essentially a recreational drug for the majority of users.

1 more reply

ahoyhereOP15y ago

Yes, exactly: if pharma is good business, and not philanthropy, then they have to focus on the people who will pay the most, the most readily, and the most often. End of story.

Case in point: I'm an American who lives in Vienna, Austria, and I have recurring upper-respiratory/immune system problems.

Here, I am treated with a so-cheap-it's-almost-free immune system booster called Broncho Vaxom. It's nothing but dead bacteria, but it's extremely effective (essentially an oral vaccine).

It's used to save lives of children in the poorest of nations -- but it's not available in the US, because it's not profitable, whereas continuous rounds of antibiotics are.

http://www.google.com/search?q=broncho%20vaxom

Vivtek15y ago

So first responders in Florida have a problem. No coral snake antivenom.

A similar market situation applies to flu shots.

Generally, free marketeers protest that this isn't true, in the face of all evidence I can see, but look at the business logic; it's inescapable.

1 more reply

stretchwithme15y ago

what people need is the freedom to act and create. government, especially when it takes by force from some to give to others for whatever purpose, distorts the decisions people make

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse