On 21/09/2012 07:27 PM, andrel wrote:
> I think you're case for the pharmaceuticals is a bit biased towards the
> official propaganda of those companies.
> Reality is much more complex.

I see...

> There is the problem that very few new medicines come on the market.

Cool. So all those "first time in man" drugs I've helped my ex-employers 
work on... apparently those didn't actually exist, right?

> The rules are probably just too strict.

This is somewhat outside my area of expertise, but IMHO the rules are 
reasonably OK ATM.

> And the main improvements are mostly
> done, most things nowadays are statistical improvements.

While it's true that there are plenty of cases of designing a new drug 
which is like an existing one but slightly different in some way, it's 
also true that there are plenty of people scouring the tropical 
rainforests, the great coral reefs, and the bottom of the oceans to find 
unusual molecules that do something interesting. Most drugs are "found" 
rather than "designed". Oh, sure, the molecule you find might not be 
perfect; you might need to do some design work to improve it. But the 
basic design is from mother nature's kitchen, mostly.

> What the
> companies are doing is finding ways to extend an existing patent, not
> creating new ones. (A bit like Walt Disney finding ways to extend the IP
> on mickey mouse indefinitely.)

Again, while I'm sure they /do/ try to find inventive ways to keep 
milking their stuff for every last penny, that doesn't mean that there's 
nothing new coming out.

> The money they earn with that only for a
> small fraction goes into research, most of it goes to marketing.

Now /that/ I can believe...

> In the mean time proven effective medicine is withdrawn from the market,
> because they make more money on another medicine.

I doubt that. Usually once a drug comes off patent, a whole raft of 
other companies step in to start copying it. (My ex-employers got quite 
a lot of contracts from companies wanting to investigate the properties 
of drugs that have just recently come off patent.)

> And we need Bill Gates to fund the medicines that are needed but not
> profitable.

Sadly, that is probably true. It costs a fortune to develop a drug; 
you're probably not going to bother for something extremely rare. (Who 
would you test it on anyway?) Meaning that if you contract a very rare 
disease... you're kind of screwed.

> It is clear that the current way of funding medicines has a lot of
> problems, but we don't have a better alternative yet.

I agree with this sentence.

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