this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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FDA approves cure for sickle cell disease, the first treatment to use CRISPR (www.nbcnews.com)
submitted 11 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] j4yt33@feddit.de 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's tricky because the money, time and opportunity cost gone into development, testing and the approval process are also priced into this. Plus the fact that this needs to not only break even but make some money plus the fact that this won't be relevant for a huge market I think (not sure how prevalent SCD is). So it's an outrageous price but probably not just plucked out of thin air

[–] drahardja@lemmy.world 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This is why pharma research should be publicly funded, and the results go directly into public domain. We will save so much money and lives in the long run that way.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

A LOT of pharma research gets significant public funding. They then patent it and privatize the profits. Then spending millions on advertising.

Then they try and justify pricing from the total cost of not only development, but also advertising budgets, while avoiding any mention of where the actual development funding came from in the first place.

That's not for everything, but it's a large enough number of drugs and treatments that the entire industry is based on bullshit.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The bigger one is to decouple development from manufacturing.

Development should be done on a bounty type system. Both countries and individual groups can put money into bounties.

Once the bounty is claimed, then the drug is effectively free for all to produce. This lets us leverage capitalism to push prices down.

This would reshape drug development from max money, to most needed.

[–] mapiki@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I like this - but would companies that fail (in being second) not get credit for their work? You could imagine the second place actually having a more effective product at the end.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

You don't have a yes/no payout. You have a graded payout. E.g. you might have a 1 shot cure pay out the full amount, but a sustained treatment only pay a smaller %. This lets you encourage development of the most effective treatment, not the most profitable. It's currently better to make a condition chronic, and so need treatment for a lifetime, than develop a cure.

You also don't pay out all at once. By spreading it out over sat 10 years. It means it can be adjusted if the company's claims are... less than accurate.