db2@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
And who is in charge of making sure this kind of immoral illegal thing doesn’t happen? People who are still somehow allowed to collect kickbacks in exchange for looking the other way.
db2@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
And who is in charge of making sure this kind of immoral illegal thing doesn’t happen? People who are still somehow allowed to collect kickbacks in exchange for looking the other way.
Dave@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
We don’t have the information needed to decide whether to be angry.
Drug studies are costly. We need to know how much R&D cost for this drug, what the average is, what percentage of research never hits the market, and then how many doses of this are expected to be sold over say a 5 year period.
Then we can work out a rough true cost of each dose.
JohnSwanFromTheLough@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Wasn’t COVID research funded by taxpayers under form of grants/emergency funds to pharma companies during the pandemic?
Dave@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
Yes, for vaccine research. I don’t know if this specifically was covered. Another thing on the list of things we need to know before we get angry.
yiliu@informis.land 11 months ago
Much of the research happened long before COVID–at a loss. There’s a reason this miraculous new mDNA vaccine technology appeared out of nowhere just in time for the pandemic: researchers had been working on it for years already, using investments and borrowed money. Government grants just went to finishing the vaccine and scaling up so quickly it was kinda mindboggling. They didn’t just get to stuff it in their pockets.
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I think we’d be better off is we shifted R&D to academia. Sure there’s a fuck ton of bureaucracy in universities, but maybe then our tax dollars will be put to good use, and people learn.
Dave@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
I would love that.
be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 11 months ago
https://jacobin.com/2023/09/big-pharma-research-and-development-new-drugs-buybacks-biden-medicare-negotiation
christophski@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Even if R&D cost $100m for this, they’d still only need to sell roughly 8000 doses to make their money back.
SwingingKoala@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
1400 * 8000 = 11.200.00, so you’re off by a factor of 10
christophski@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Haha, you got in there before I corrected my typo. The point still stands though! There’s a whole lot of people in the world, 80k doses is fuck all.
Dave@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
I think you’re grossly underestimating how much things cost.
dutchkimble@lemy.lol 11 months ago
Orrr, hear me out, we can be angry right now without any prep, put in a comment about big corpo greed, and move on the to next Lemmy post.