Security quote of the week [LWN.net]

Security quote of the week

Posted Sep 16, 2021 8:24 UTC (Thu) by ddevault (subscriber, #99589)
In reply to: Security quote of the week by Cyberax
Parent article: Security quote of the week

>It is. Pharma companies have the largest R&D percentage among ALL industries.

I understand that R&D is the greatest cost in medicine, that's not the question. The question is where the money comes from. Private companies put up a lot, but the public puts up much more - so why should the company be given the sole right to exploit the public's health and well being with the results? These companies take the artificial monopoly granted by patents and then extort the public in a non-competitive market - the demand has no choice but to buy! Capitalism cannot work here.

I don't buy it, not one bit, but if we assume that what you say is true: is it just or moral? Hell no! The system should be torn down with prejudice, the patents seized with eminent domain and returned to the public to save lives. All future R&D should be publicly funded and medical companies will have to live with restructuring their business model to earn their margins from the (regulated) manufacture and sale of the products. And the public R&D money is there: given your $5B figure, the US war of terror^W^W^Wwar on terror's budget would have covered the cost of over 1,600 novel drugs, or about 80 per year, and, bonus, would have saved US lives instead of murdering far away brown people.

Future generations will view us with horror and disgust, and we deserve it. We live in a post-scarcity world where we chose to re-introduce artificial scarcity in order to enrichen the few at the expense of destroying the planet and ending lives. Humanity possesses enough food, homes, and medical resources to ensure that every human being will never die of unnecessary hunger, exposure, or injury or illness, and we *choose* to let them die of these things.

It's fucking horrible, and medical patents are one of the foremost evils of this warped system.

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Security quote of the week

Posted Sep 16, 2021 9:41 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> The question is where the money comes from. Private companies put up a lot, but the public puts up much more

The absolute overwhelming majority of money for drug development funding comes from private sources. Around 80-90% of it (depending on the calculation method) - https://www.drugcostfacts.org/public-vs-private-drug-funding

The public and private academic funds are mostly used for fundamental research.

> Capitalism cannot work here.

So far capitalism is the only source that allowed us to get highly efficient vaccines within 6 months of disease discovery.

> All future R&D should be publicly funded and medical companies will have to live with restructuring their business model to earn their margins from the (regulated) manufacture and sale of the products.

This means that there won't be any more R&D. RIP.

Oh, and if you're expropriating everything, are you going to return investors money that they sank on failed pharma companies? I invested in an anti-sense DNA company a while ago and it totally failed (like the whole approach). I would like to get my money back, with interest.

> And the public R&D money is there: given your $5B figure, the US war of terror^W^W^Wwar on terror's budget would have covered the cost of over 1,600 novel drugs, or about 80 per year, and, bonus, would have saved US lives instead of murdering far away brown people.

Reality: high inefficient bureaucratic apparatus will be used to distribute money to cronies in the bureaucracy. Since 90% of drug candidates fail and it takes almost a DECADE to move a drug from initial screening hits to Phase 3, the funds can be embezzled with a perfect cover.

Security quote of the week

Posted Sep 29, 2021 7:27 UTC (Wed) by Randakar (guest, #27808) [Link] (1 responses)

The problem here is that your sources are flawed. That site - https://www.drugcostfacts.org is produced by a political lobbying group working for Big Pharma.

For background: https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/...

As for COVID, and who funded it: Here: https://bobsullivan.net/beyondthebumpersticker/whos-fundi...

Security quote of the week

Posted Sep 29, 2021 8:42 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> The problem here is that your sources are flawed.

Care to point errors in them? SEC data is public.

Your own link contains tons of information about scum like T*ring Pharmaceuticals that doesn't relate to actual R&D at all.

The reality is that pharma development is EXPENSIVE. For a typical approved drug there are 10 drugs that failed in clinical trials. For each Moderna there are hundreds of startups that failed (just ask antisense DNA/RNA guys).

This is quite clear from the stock performance: ^DRG (Pharma Index on Nasdaq) went up from 320 in 2006 to 800 now. Meanwhile, NASDAQ overall went up from 2300 to 14500 now. BTW, this is one of the reasons pharma companies pay dividends.