Re: New York Times: Free Drug Samples? Bad Idea, Some Say

In article <f1avfi0107s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Pete" <pete@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article <f1alkf01mam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Pete" <pete@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


That's the whole point Jeff. If they find a cure, they will lose
their continuing profit which they get from all the maintenance type
drugs that people take long term. That is where they get most of
their money from. It is a basic concept of the dog eat dog
capitalistic world we live in.

Well then go ahead and cure a disease. Let me know how well it works
Cancers get cured, most infections (non-viral) get cured, etc. There
are many that get cured, even many cancers. Polio prevented and cured
before hand. Most of the rest are waiting on ways to redo the body
(for example rewire the brain and correct chemical imbalances for
schizophrenia) before cures can be effected. For some reason you are
holding the pharm companies solely responsible for the state of the
art in medicine and our knowledge of physiology, etc.

I didn't want to get into a discussion on this last part of my post,
and I just tossed it in as kind of an aside for some levity. But I
don't understand your logic on this, and doubt whether very many
people would agree with you. I see no incentive for big Pharma to
try to cure a disease and get a one time profit (so to speak) - it's
not logical, even though it is rather inhumane. Like I said, this
has been discussed at length in many ng's for years, as you are well
aware of.

Of course there is a reason to cure. It ain't one time. I get a
disorder of some sort. It is cured. But there are always more with
this disorder coming up behind me. You think the advent of penicillin
took away all cases of sore throat in kids?

Kurt...I figured someone would say something like that, and was going to
mention it, but figured most people would know that is not the "kind of cure
for a disease" that we are talking about here. A sore throat is usually a
simple disease process (unless there is a more serious underlying cause for
it) that may be cured, or cleared up by antibiotics, or just go away
naturally with salt water gargling, and letting the body's immune system do
it's job.

And for the more serious and difficult to solve disease processes (that the
Pharma's do not want to try to cure, but do want to try to keep them at
bay), I also figured someone like you would mention the people coming up
from behind, if there was a cure. But there is a tremendous difference
between the people coming up from behind and being cured, and those same
people taking lifelong "brand name" (ie expensive) drugs instead, if they
were not cured. The total sale for the lifelong medication will far exceed
the cost for the one time cure (by a magnitude of 100's to 1000's of times,
depending on how long the person lives). And even when the drug eventually
goes generic, there will be newer drug to replace it, that will say it is
better, blah blah blah.

Penicillin is probably the greatest single drug discovery to date, but that
is not what we are talking about here. I'll stand on what I said. The big
Pharma's do not want to find cures for the puzzling and difficult to solve
disease processes, when they can make way more money controlling symptoms by
long term maintenance use of their drugs. There is no doubt in my mind that
this is true, and I believe it is basic common sense and logic, and a simple
result of real world economics (unfortunate as it is).

Pete

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pete,
Someone in another newsgroup mentioned a small drug company that was
developing a drug that would CURE some types of kidney diseases. A huge
drug company was already selling a medicaiton that was designed to TREAT
at least one of those kidney diseases. That huge drug company purchased
the rights to that medication that could cure some types of kidney
diseases. Lots of people that had kidney diseases were HOPING that new
drug would eventually cure their kidneys diseases. GUESS WHAT? That huge
drug company did continue to develop that medication. The reason is
related to MONEY. They knew that they could make much more money by NEVER
developing that medicaiton that could cure some types of kidney disease.
They could make much more money from their medications that could TREAT
those kidney diseases. Follow the money. Don't ask me for proof since I
failed to write down the name of that drug
Jason
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