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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26081 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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The annual US revenue of Novo Nordisk (Semaglutide) seems to be 45G$,

Isn't it a Danish company? I've wondered about that because I've seen lots of concern about cuts to research funding citing GLP medications as an example, but it seems odd that my tax dollars payed for the research, and now I would have to pay the Danes, as it were, to use it.

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we've proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

it seems odd that my tax dollars payed for the research, and now I would have to pay the Danes, as it were, to use it.

I don't see the contradiction. Basic research is mostly funded through taxes of Western countries, and here the US was most prolific. This research is then made available to the public (though sometimes you have to pay Elsevier, which sucks).

Pharmaceutical companies then use that basic research to discover active ingredients and go through the long, grueling and expensive process of getting them approved as pharmaceuticals. In return, they get temporary monopolies ("patents") on their active ingredients. There is a lot to criticize about how this system works. Details about what can or can not be patented, and how the latter means that nobody will pay to turn it into approved pharmaceuticals. Drug pricing both generally and within the US in particular. That the financial incentives make it much more profitable to sell lifestyle medication to rich Westeners than to cure debilitating diseases in the developing world. The general role of the medical priesthood as gatekeepers which determine which substances I can or can not put into my body.

Criticizing that in this case, one of the companies which holds the patents is nominally Danish (Eli Lilly is nominally US -- but at the end of the day, most are publicly traded and probably have campuses in multiple countries) seems rather low on that list.

Paging Alfred the great... a fine king, the best! He had some great people in Wessex, it was a very dangerous situation. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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