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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26587 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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So why is the United States paying for > 100% of global pharma research? And how can we fix the glitch?

Read bad medicine and bad pharma - R&D costs of pharma are minor percentage of their total expenses. They spend more on marketing than R&D

AbbVie spent $11 billion on sales and marketing in 2020, compared to $8 billion on R&D. Pfizer spent $12 billion on sales and marketing, compared to $9 billion on R&D. Novartis spent $14 billion on sales and marketing, compared to $9 billion on R&D. GlaxoSmithKline spent $15 billion on sales and marketing, compared to $7 billion on R&D. Sanofi spent $11 billion on sales and marketing, compared to $6 billion on R&D. Bayer spent $18 billion on sales and marketing, compared to $8 billion on R&D. Johnson & Johnson spent $22 billion on sales and marketing, compared to $12 billion on R&D.

1st - remove patents. The whole point of a patent is to share the secret sauce so it is not lost, but lately patents don't share the secret sauce (most glaringly in software patents). They can't hide the molecule - and their competitors can figure out synthesis of their own. Since they will have an edge with internal knowledge they will have competitive advantage initially and if they keep their margins sane - there probably won't be incentive for the others to invest the capital to figure out how to produce the thing and set up a supply chain.

2nd - extend patents and order maximum margin over the production cost. If they have 5times longer period to recoup the investment their books may be balanced.

3rd - change the procurement procedure. For society wide needed drugs - Uncle Sam (with pitches from EU) grants the players some money to do R&D, offers generous prepurchase and prize grants for the winner, and ends owning the patent - afterwards the pharma companies can manufacture wherever they like and compete with generics. Something similar was done with covid and no matter what your opinion on vaccination was - it worked in delivering multiple safe-ish working products in record time

Yup, I have sympathy w/ pharma companies over R&D costs. I don't have sympathy for all the TV, magazine, and online commercials they run. The only downside is we might have a flood of unemployed attractive, moderately intelligent women from various sororities around the country if pharma has less marketing dollars.

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