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One-shot cures for diseases are not great for business—more specifically, they’re bad for longterm profits—Goldman Sachs analysts noted in an April 10 report for biotech clients, first reported by CNBC.
The investment banks’ report, titled “The Genome Revolution,” asks clients the touchy question: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The answer may be “no,” according to follow-up information provided.
[...] The potential to deliver “one shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies... While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.
[...] Ars reached out to Goldman Sachs, which confirmed the content of the report but declined to comment.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:42AM (37 children)
Curing patients one-shot - even if it's a hugely expensive one-shot - can be a very sustainable business model, because people have been doing it for ages! Broken legs are treated with a one-single-treatment-regime-and-then-you're-done of ~6 weeks duration. Sure! It works, and is sustainable.
Cure a genome broken by trisomy 21 for 2 million US$ in a single shot? Sure, it's expensive, but compared to the lifetime cost of care for a typical sufferer that's still a bargain - and I think it very likely this calculation will hold for most, if not all, sicknesses, esp. when we as a society inevitably improve our knowldge of gene therapy.
Of course, if instead of extracting 2M$ for a single, final cure you want to extract 200k$ a year for continuous treatments over a 60year lifetime (i.e.: 12M$ total) .... than a rational society will throw you into jail for a) failure to assist a person in danger, potentially even assault or (depending on the sickness) manslaughter/murder, and b) racketeering.
Does it sound like contemporary big pharma already?
(Score: 2, Informative) by adun on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:22AM (1 child)
> Curing patients one-shot - even if it's a hugely expensive one-shot - can be a very sustainable business model, because people have been doing it for ages!
It's not too surprising, considering that many of these diseases are age- and/or environment-related. For every patient getting a one-shot cure, there's another one getting sick right now.
It may not be as efficient as continuously delivering overpriced drugs to two patients at the same time, but it sure as hell is sustainable.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:30PM
Its only sustainable if carefully contrived examples posted by the GP.
Lets say the infrastructure and manufacturing (to say nothing about the development costs) costs 5 or 10 million per patient, and there's less than 100 people in the US with this disease.
Still sustainable? Keeping that facility open and technicians employed after you treat those 100, waiting for the next one to be born - Still sustainable? You've got zero income, and
people don't want to work for free for some reason.
Things to treat a broken leg, gauze, plaster, pain killers, cost next to nothing, and have multiple uses. The doctor/nurse time costs very little.
Comparing that to custom single patient drug that costs millions to produce for a one time use is a dishonest cheap-shot comparison.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:39AM (30 children)
I think you misunderstand what a rational society is. A rational society would simply require X% of quarterly profits for drug companies go to researching cures and that these cures then make it to the market. The system you're looking for isn't "rational society" but "slavery". You know, forcing people to work for others and offering them violence or imprisonment if they fail to... slavery.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by tonyPick on Sunday April 15 2018, @11:36AM (27 children)
So, is the government forcing companies to do this research, and offering them violence or imprisonment if they fail to do so (you know, the thing you called "slavery")? Or is your view of a rational society Market Socialism [wikipedia.org], with a specified Social Dividend [wikipedia.org]?
Oh Buzzard, you've changed.
:D
(Score: 2, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:03PM (24 children)
What ever gave you the idea that I was an anarchist? I'm fully aware that natural (mono|duo|etc...)polies are going to exist and that the government needs to set some minimalist ground rules for them. I side with at least a small amount of government regulation most every time the word monopoly comes up in the conversation because monopoly means no competition and competition is what makes capitalism work so amazingly well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Monday April 16 2018, @11:07AM (23 children)
Nothing, but you've come out strongly against the idea of public intervention based on the idea of a social good, for example: here's one [soylentnews.org].
And this isn't a case of n-opolies or increased competition: the competitive marketplace is behaving as expected, finding the optimally profitable solution. We might find it reprehensible, or want ti to do something else, but it's behaving "rationally" in exactly the way a capitalist system is *supposed* to.
You're advocating direct intervention in the operation of companies in the market based on a preferred social outcome, and that _is_ a change from the classic Buzzardian economics of "Make them compete and let the market sort it out": instead it's pretty much the Utilitarian-European-Centre-Left position of social good over free markets, which you have characterised as [soylentnews.org] things being "being taken from me by force because you think it should".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 16 2018, @03:47PM (22 children)
Oh it very much is a case of opoly-itis. Patents are a government granted monopoly and there's not a damned thing wrong with requiring something in exchange for said monopoly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Tuesday April 17 2018, @01:38PM (21 children)
Which is great. But there's nothing unique about biotech companies in this regard, is there?
So the argument that the government should be able to demand development for free, and dip into your wallet to enforce that[1] applies equally to tech companies, no? Or to telecoms, or electronics manufacturers, or anyone
else with patents.
Taking this to the extreme you'd support the government making Netflix spend X% of its production budget on "why encryption is evil, guns are bad, and Fishing is just Plain Wrong" programming, because Netflix has Patents, so the government should be able to get what it wants in return?[2]
And lets be honest, there's nothing particularly unique about patents here either - they're just the particularly geek-visible edge of the whole IPR tangle, which includes copyrights and trademarks, all of which assign government granted monopolies to specific aspects of business operations. In fact there's a name for the set of companies survive because the government assigns monopoly control over unique aspects of the marketplace they operate in: "All of them".
[1] Because fundamentally that's how Governments pay for things they do...
[2] Well, clearly not, but where and why you draw the line here is interesting.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:15PM (20 children)
There indeed is. Receiving a patent on nearly everything else arguably serves to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". When applied to the pharmaceutical industry though, it is clearly not having the desired effect and should absolutely be either tweaked to do so or removed as a patentable category. These government granted monopolies are not a right, they are a means to an end with a specific condition that must be met to be eligible.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday April 18 2018, @07:49AM (19 children)
In 2015 the biomed Industry "invested $102.7 billion" [teconomypartners.com] in R&D, and they're getting patents, but that's on non-trivial work that takes years to develop. As per TFA this is a whole new set of developments in the sector, and while we don't like where the market is going, that's not to say there's some novel work that's going on there.
Compare this to, say, the Software-Tech sector has given us everything from "Patent Trolls" to "the-obvious-with-a-computer", and lowlights from IBM's "paying for the work of the ancient greeks" [forbes.com] to Creative's "Charge Carmack to use Carmack's Reverse" [geek.com]
And given these two, you think it's the biomed sector where things have fallen over? When the tech sector has companies that not only know that a halfway-bright teenager can independently reinvent their entire patent holdings, but literally built their entire business around that fact?
Of the two biomed is doing way more than most other sectors to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". The main complaint here is that there's some _other_ stuff they could be doing, and we would like them to do, but they aren't, "because capitalism".
If you're going to argue that there's a "specific condition that must be met to be eligible." then the fact is that the Software industry, and most everyone else, is below the level of Biomed in these regards, and if Biomed companies are subject to "development for free, and dip into your wallet to enforce that" then so is most everyone else.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 18 2018, @10:47AM (18 children)
Comparison to other sectors is irrelevant. What's relevant is that the biomed industry is not supplying what people actually need. You can remedy that either by stealing from absurd amounts from taxpayers to fund the necessary research and then creating a government entity to produce the cures or you can require something in return for those extremely lucrative, government granted monopolies the biomed industry has been enjoying for so long. I know which I prefer.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:46AM (17 children)
Of course it's important to compare this to other sectors.
You're arguing that if industry "foo" is not supplying what people need then the government can just come in and seize private property. Your reasoning for this comes down to "They could maybe do other stuff I want more, and the Government does things for them, so take the means of production".
The biomed industry is one of the more tightly regulated, behaving better than most others in patent terms, working just how the market "rationally" expects and it's relying on exactly the same framework of government services and IPR that every other industry sector and business in the modern world relies on.
Why shouldn't these "just take their stuff" rules apply other industries that are less well regulated, or exploiting IPR in worse ways, or just not providing the things someone else would like them to?
Why shouldn't they apply to you & yours?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:40AM (16 children)
No. I'm not. I'm arguing that congress has both the ability and the duty to adjust copyright and patent laws until it makes sense to have them at all. They are currently being treated as a near permanent pass at competition for anyone who gets them in return for fuck all. They either need to be done away with entirely or they need to be rewritten in such a manner as to actually benefit the nation in return for that pass, as that is the reason for their existence in the first place.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Friday April 20 2018, @12:01PM (15 children)
This is a distinction that makes no difference. The list of industry segments that behave like this _is_ essentially everyone in technology, and the argument you make for the government taking their property for the benefit of the public can apply equally to taking your property for someone else's benefit as a result.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 20 2018, @12:20PM (14 children)
What property is being taken? They'd be being given patents in exchange for something while being under no obligation to enter into the agreement at all. That is what we call voluntary exchange in capitalist circles.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Monday April 23 2018, @01:10PM (13 children)
From your opening comment you'd "require X% of quarterly profits for drug companies" to be spent in a way the government dictates as "good". Or are you going to get finicky about the definition of property here?
And you've swung around to a version of "Government provides service, and dictates the required payment for this service through a taxation scheme".
You have previously referred to this theft [soylentnews.org] and slavery [soylentnews.org]. The distinction you have stuck to in *this* case is that you expect other people to pay, and that you will benefit.
And what's interesting here is the move from this being "theft and slavery" to "reasonable and voluntary exchange" based on the "does it apply to me or to other people?" rule.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 23 2018, @01:55PM (12 children)
When Party A asks something of Party B and Party B requires something in return but Party A is free to refuse the deal, this is the very definition of a voluntary agreement. Explain to me how this is not so or this is a lost argument for you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Tuesday April 24 2018, @01:51PM (11 children)
Sure - and let's go further and fill in the blanks from upthread, where "Party B" is "The Government", and the required "something" is to "define and enforce private property rights", and the "something in return" part is "X% of the money made by Party A".
Let's assume we can fill in those things and the original statement remains true. There are objections, but they are neither interesting nor unique, so for the sake of argument let's say you're right.
What is curious here is how you have called this "slavery" and "theft" elsewhere, and "reasonable" in this thread, yet the only substantive difference you've highlighted so far is that in the other cases Party A was you, and here Party A is someone else.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 24 2018, @06:21PM (10 children)
Patents and coyprights are not property rights. They are artificially created monopolies that would not exist sans government declaring them to. I have never been in the "yay monopolies!" camp. Very limited monopolies can serve a useful purpose but that does not imply that they should be without cost. You'll have to try a different approach.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday April 25 2018, @01:59PM (9 children)
Go on.
So, purely social and legal constructs? aka: the textbook definition economists use [sioe.org] for Property rights? [wikipedia.org].
And if you're going to try to draw a distinction here, are you now saying parties A and B from above can't enter voluntary agreements about things that *aren't* solely created by the government? Like land? Or stocks and shares? Or contracts?
Congratulations. But this has nothing to do with that. It's where you draw the line so that the whole "A provides a service to B in return for a cost" will work when A is the Government and B is "these other people", but won't apply to your case to such a dramatic extent that it's theft as opposed to paying what you owe. And honestly, I'm just curious at this point to see where it goes, and why you think that.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:53PM (8 children)
Property rights are natural rights. Nothing needs be granted you by an outside entity for you to claim and hold property (though disputes are likely if you go around claiming things others also claim). Patents and copyright are abstract social constructs that do not exist without first being defined and granted by an outside entity; they are not rights but at most contractual agreements between the government and its citizens. They are also in fact explicitly spelled out as being authorized only for a stated purpose. If said purpose is not being satisfied congress is not only legally entitled to adjust the contract but obligated to do so. The manner in which they are allowed to do this is left undefined and is thus entirely up to congress, subject to judicial review.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday May 02 2018, @05:38AM (7 children)
So, like money? (Government being the thing putting the fiat in fiat-currency)
So, exactly like money and taxation? I would think given those things that you would be happier about the latter.
You know that for a large part of history those things you call "natural rights" would have included other people [boredpanda.com], right? And we're really happy this is no longer the case, with "natural" rights being just another term for "social and legal construct", right?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 02 2018, @11:01AM (6 children)
You're confusing the idea of money with the ownership of a given amount of money. You're also under the misapprehension that the government controls money. It somewhat controls the dollar but the dollar is not remotely the only currency even Americans exchange and the government does not set its value relative to anything it is exchanged for.
No. Neither of those are actually true.
Utterly incorrect. You're still stuck with the idea that rights are created or granted by external entities. They are not. External entities of any sort can only either protect or infringe upon rights as rights exist independent of them. Anything they grant that you did not naturally possess is not in fact a right. It can be an entitlement but that is not remotely the same thing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Friday May 04 2018, @02:10PM (5 children)
You're simply describing what money is for and how it is used - this doesn't change what it _is_. (Although yes, I was specifically referencing the dollar, that being what you use, and what your arguments have references)
It's a fiat currency - which is to say, an inherently worthless object assigned a value that is backed by the government that issued it. That ticks the "do not exist without first being defined and granted by an outside entity" box on which you lean heavily, and from which you justify the power to arbitrarily define the terms under which it is provided.
Then you might want to find a different definition for what you believe the objectives of patents to be - it's on the same piece of paper, and if you do not stand by the notions at the top of the page you should not lean so heavily on a subsequent detail further down.
If personal property was such an independent right, as opposed to being inextricably linked to social constructs, then the definition of it would not change so fluidly over time: You would not be arguing that something regarded by "Wise men" in the 6th century as a natural right was some imposition of modern governments, or that the "havoc of paper-money", something objected to up until the 19th century, was not. We would not be horrified by the mindset that could consider other people property, but not land, though that was seen as natural around the 11th century.
However, it looks like you've decided to go with Lockian-17th-century-Jesus-put-our-name-on-it-natural-law, which I find unconvincing, but you really should have said that up front.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 04 2018, @10:43PM (4 children)
You misunderstand. All money is inherently worthless unless it's being used as barter of the underlying substance instead of as money. That does not make ownership of a given bit that you have exchanged goods or services for any less a right.
Definitions are social constructs. They cannot affect things that exist independent of societies. We could all start calling rain "dry" tomorrow but we'd still be using umbrellas.
Horse shit. I've repeatedly defined what a right is in this thread and it has nothing to do with being granted anything by any entity.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday May 06 2018, @08:47AM (3 children)
You've just restated what John Locke's natural law based labour theory of property rights *say*. And they're from the 17th century because it's not a new idea. And it's dependent on religion because that's one of the fundamental axioms in how natural rights are generally formed (and if you have a neat solution to that then tell Van Dun, or Rothbard, or Nozick, or any of the many politicians or economists or philosophers of the past few centuries who would have liked a neat obvious answer to this one that doesn't end up in "just because").
Aaaaaand at this point I realise I've been trolled, since you can't be doing this "say it's different, then highlight the ways in which it's identical" thing so much by accident. Crap. Well played.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 06 2018, @10:28AM (2 children)
*sigh*
Okay, I'll spell it out one more time. Rights do not come from anywhere. Not from other humans and not from any supernatural entity. The combination of every possible action a person could take or refrain from taking (from freedom of speech to the right to spontaneously turn purple) starts out existing as one big superset of rights in every human being. Only when the question of a specific subset of the superset being infringed upon or voluntarily set aside comes up is there even a need for the naming of a right. Like the infinite potential arcs in a circle.
We voluntarily set aside many rights for the sake of getting along with other people. More are infringed upon by whatever government we live under. For practical purposes, any named right is simply a part of the superset that is in contention enough to be worth defining.
So asking where a right comes from is not an intelligent question but a fundamental misunderstanding of what a right actually is. It makes precisely as much sense as asking where a particular arc in a circle comes from. Likewise asking why you have a right should always be answered "Because I refuse to surrender it." if the person being asked understands what a right is.
You're currently arguing that the ability to limit the rights of others, granted you and backed by implied violence by the government, is also a right. It, however, has an origin other than preexistence in every human and thus can not be considered a right. That can be an entitlement or whatever other word you care to call it but it can never be a right.
Does this clear things up for you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday May 09 2018, @06:52AM (1 child)
Oh, for a minute there you had me going, and I though you might be serious despite everything, but then these lines gave it away, and that's the funniest thing I've read all week. Very *very* clever to bring in a geometry reference just there. I get that you don't necessarily want to break character, but that's such an excellently done joke that I think you deserve congratulating for it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 09 2018, @08:04AM
No joke. Take stepping off with your right foot when you start walking. Do you have the right to do it? Why? Where does that right originate from? Wrong question, ain't it? That right exists because it has not been called into question. Its origin is exactly the same as every other right. It does not have one. A right is simply a defined absence of oppression.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:35PM (1 child)
No, its simply a cost of doing business. The people are free to choose another line of business, or become farmers, or what ever.
Forcing businesses to do certain things in a certain way. The electrician can't wire your house any way they want. They are required to follow the electrical code. Is that slavery? When was the last time you saw an electrician in chains being sold in the slave market?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Monday April 16 2018, @01:39AM
much MUCH more than that.
These companies enjoy a special, place protected by both questionable intellectual property protections (they are allowed to 'own' often natural
compounds because they found a use for them - like giving the first person who found that oil could burn a patent over burning oil), and by having
regulatory capture, whereby only certain companies are even allowed to supply these types of products because 'medical'.
However, basically NOTHING is required in return for this special position.
That is inequitable to society, and society should demand a more equitable situation, or remove those protections.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely compatible with not only current market philosophy, but is actually demanded by accepted natural law.
The thing standing in the way is of course corruption allowed by these companies backdooring huge money in to political decision making processes.
Their cries of 'We need the money for research, we are only doing this for the good of humankind' is such an obvious lie these days that it is beyond laughable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @06:03AM (1 child)
After all if you have a serious genetic problem that might be passed to your children, with 7+ billion people already on this planet what makes your disease ridden fetus so worth keeping? Just because it has your crappy genes?
If you want a baby without those faulty genes I can donate some sperm and someone else can provide the eggs. It'll be 99% like you minus your serious diseases, even if it's not even the same race or color, that's what those anti-racism scientists claim right? So you can achieve mostly the same thing without gene modification if it's all about being rational.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 16 2018, @10:27AM
It'd be worth proposing that just to watch the butthurt that exploded when the left realized sickle cell anemia was one of those instances. I do love me a good troll.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:15PM (3 children)
Not just that, but in some parts of the world the traditional business model for healing people is that you pay when you feel well and stop paying until the medical provider has resolved the ailment. Which in many ways makes a lot more sense as there's less conflict of interest.
Also, in most parts of the world, they don't focus on profit in the first place as it's pretty disgusting to draw all those lines about life based only on the bottom line.
There is going to be a point where it's just too expensive to provide further treatments, but that kind of thing should be considered carefully. Any such evaluations should be based more on the quality and quantity of life that the patient would have later on. Trying to treat brain cancer in a 90 year old is probably not worthwhile, but not because the company doing the procedure can't get paid, but because it offers relatively little quality of life after the procedure.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:42PM (2 children)
Yes, and the witch doctors and shamans that practice there know that most people will heal themselves if left alone, (because that's what all animals do), and the rest can be blamed on evil spirits. So the cures and treatments don't actually have to work at all.
This is why we have nephropathy and homeopathy and assorted other quack treatments.
But hey, way to champion a rational medical system!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @01:46PM
Ah, nice to see some "rational" bigotry going on here.
The point is that they have a system where the money is aligned with the best interests of the patients to a much larger degree than in the US.
Also, despite your arrogant chortles, the medical system in Europe and the US at the same time that those "witch doctors" were the main source of medicine was hardly any better. They'd have people taking all sorts of weird treatments with no particular evidence of efficacy, but they'd be making money directly off the cures that ranged from questionable to fraudulent to downright dangerous.
Homeopathy is something that people like you like to trot out because it's an easy target for pot shots, the more typical treatments for things involve herbal remedies which remain the main source of pharmaceuticals in the current era. We've just recently gotten to the point where we can do things that don't require a plant to do it first. And yet, you make it sound like we're centuries further ahead of those practices than we are. Western medical science isn't as advanced as people like you would have us believe. We're still behaving like bacteria cause illness when there's scant evidence to support that version for most diseases. It's superstition that kills a lot of people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @09:59AM
Yeah but it's funny how lots of companies interview those shamans and witch doctors to learn what herbs they use in order to find more stuff to patent.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mother-natures-medicine-c/ [scientificamerican.com]
They often need to know more than just what herb:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/medicines-in-nature/ [nationalgeographic.com]
There's a very good argument for having standardized pills so you know exactly how much of the stuff you're taking and also for figuring out side effects, doses and interactions. But one should also realize that lots of those cures and treatments we have come from traditional knowledge.
Lastly:
In very many cases "modern medicine" doctors do a similar thing - they give patients antibiotics or placebos for milder cases of flu. And the patients heal themselves.
Even for stuff like surgery and bone setting it's the body that has to do the final job of putting the pieces together. It doesn't always work (e.g. idiot patient smokes after reattachment surgery, diabetes etc).