drug companies ignoring unprofitable cancer research

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rabidmonkey4262
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13 May 2011, 9:40 pm

"Pharmaceutical companies are not investing in this research because DCA method cannot be patented, without a patent they can’t make money"

I witnessed four people die slow and painful deaths because of ineffective and expensive chemo treatments. I am currently witnessing a 6-year-old struggle with a brain tumor that she has been fighting for the great majority of her life. When I read articles like this, I am truly disgusted with the greed in the pharmaceutical industry.

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice


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13 May 2011, 9:52 pm

Keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies are not in business for altruistic reasons. They're in business to make money. Their investors invest in them to make money. And their employees work for them so they can bring home a paycheck. If a pharmaceutical company were to take on a line of research that offered no chance of a return on their investment, they wouldn't be able to pay their employees and they would have to post a loss to their board and their stock holders. It's not going to happen. Not because of greed or because anyone in the company is an inhuman unfeeling robot. It's because they're there to make money.

Developing a new line of pharmaceuticals is an extremely expensive undertaking. It's not just the time and effort spent to develop the new drug. It then has to be tested, preferably really REALLY thoroughly before it is released to the public. The reason name-brand drugs are expensive is because they're trying to offset the cost of the R&D that was required to develop them. The reason generic drugs are not as expensive is because the R&D work was done by someone else so there's no up-front expense to pay back.

What I'm trying to say is it's not that simple. And before you get the idea that I'm an inhuman unfeeling robot for saying this, I can tell you I'm not. I lost my mother to cancer. And my grandfather. And both my grandmothers. I almost lost my wife to it. I would love to see this technology developed. But I don't expect a company to shoulder a loss of several million dollars in research to do it just because it's the right thing to do.



StevieC
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13 May 2011, 11:09 pm

but on the other hand...


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mcg
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14 May 2011, 12:01 am

You can thank the FDA, which has single handedly made it cost 500 million dollars to bring a new drug to market.



rabidmonkey4262
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14 May 2011, 9:15 am

ViewUpHere wrote:
Keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies are not in business for altruistic reasons. They're in business to make money. Their investors invest in them to make money. And their employees work for them so they can bring home a paycheck. If a pharmaceutical company were to take on a line of research that offered no chance of a return on their investment, they wouldn't be able to pay their employees and they would have to post a loss to their board and their stock holders. It's not going to happen. Not because of greed or because anyone in the company is an inhuman unfeeling robot. It's because they're there to make money.


You don't have to tell us what a drug company is supposed to do. That's pretty obvious that they're there to make money; we're not that naive. That doesn't mean you should be defending them. Somewhere in that company, there is a person making these decisions. I don't know how they sleep at night.


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ruveyn
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14 May 2011, 9:35 am

StevieC wrote:
but on the other hand...


There is no other hand... One cannot expect privately capitalized companies to work at a loss.

ruveyn