"Secret Serum" Used To Treat Americans With Ebola 390
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes with news that the two Americans infected with Ebola in Liberia and transported to Atlanta for treatment were given an experimental drug, and their conditions appear to be improving. From the article: While some people do fight off the disease on their own, in the case of the two Americans, an experimental serum may have saved their lives. As Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol waited in a Liberian hospital, someone from the National Institutes of Health reached out to Samaritan's Purse, one of the two North Carolina-based Christian relief groups the two were working with, and offered to have vials of an experimental drug called ZMapp sent to Liberia, according to CNN's unnamed source. Although the Food and Drug Administration does allow experimental drugs to occasionally be distributed in life-threatening circumstances without approval under the expanded access or "compassionate use" conditions. It's not yet clear whether that approval was granted in this case or not. ... Brantly, who had been sick for nine days already ... [received] the first dose ... within an hour, he was able to breathe better and a rash on his body started to fade. The next day he was able to shower without help before boarding the air ambulance that flew him to Atlanta.
ROI for drug development (Score:5, Interesting)
hmmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
..but we won't give any more doses to anyone else (Score:1, Interesting)
To quote TFA:
"It is important to keep in mind that a large-scale provision of treatments and vaccines that are in very early stages of development has a series of scientific and ethical implications," the organization said in a statement.
Which means, we haven't figured (worked) out yet the costs and payment plans for this drug, so we aren't going to use it to help those people already suffering who otherwise have no chance of survival. Let's just say they are "expendable", in the name of commerce, of course.
If anyone believes that hogwash about ensuring safety and efficacy and yada yada...well the mighty dollar beats all that.
Re:ROI for drug development (Score:4, Interesting)
My particular unsupported conspiracy theory is that they have weaponized Ebola, and as a result they have had a cure for a while, just now they are using it.
Re: ROI for drug development (Score:5, Interesting)
That question has been answered many times.
The middle class fades away, Large projects stop and the society collapse.
People act like the government just appeared and hasn't been developed over time.
Also we know that the government is more efficient then the ;private industry most of the time. That's the private sectors little secret.
You can confirm that be simply looking at the federal project and see how many of them where completed on time and within budget. well of 80.
The private sector is lucky to get 30% project dun, and less then 20% within budget.
The Public sector/Private sector 80/20 has been written about many times.
Re:Expert:Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People A (Score:4, Interesting)
The rest of the world does not "get US drugs at a discount." Rather, American consumers are forced to pay a lot more for each branded medication than anyone else in the world. It is illegal for us to even shop around for a better deal.
Bust those American patents, world. We need to get affordable medications out there for all.
Re: ROI for drug development (Score:2, Interesting)
That conflicts with my political beliefs, so it can't be true.
Re:Expert:Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People A (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't really understand the hatred for drug companies.
Well, since you (sort of) asked... Americans pay an outrageous amount for health care and the largest institutional beneficiaries of that are the drug companies, being the only group with double digit profits (the other beneficiaries are high salaried individuals). Defenders of big pharma's high profits usually try to wave away complaints by saying that it's necessary to fund drug research, never mind that if the money was going to research than it wouldn't qualify as profits, but the largest allotment of drug company money goes to advertising useless drugs to people who don't need them - research averages less than 20% of pharma budgets.
Then there's the lobbying: the Medicare Modernization Act forbade the government from negotiating on the cost of drugs, ensuring that Medicare pays twice as much as other groups for common drugs. This was essentially a $200 billion gift the the pharmaceutical industry passed under the pretense of "avoiding socialism." The United States is the only country in the world which both allows drugs to be patented and does nothing to limit the cost of those drugs. And speaking of patents, we have the drug companies to blame for the death of every attempt to pass patent reform - they need strong and indiscriminate patents for foreign markets since many countries, the poorer ones in particular, need drugs but can't afford the licensing. It's funny, but the reason why we have all the problems with software patents doesn't really have anything to do with software.
Oh, and also there's the whole thing about killing people for profit. Remember Vioxx?
Re:Expert:Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People A (Score:5, Interesting)
The same people who develop drugs elsewhere in the developed world, that's who. Switzerland, for example, has a research-intensive pharma industry rivaling the US in size, and it prospers just fine without having to screw its citizens with fixed prices and special laws against shopping around.
What I want to see is a pharma industry that operates like that other industry that has a special need to invest such a large percentage of corporate operating budget into research and development - electronics. Somehow Intel manages to keep cranking out new processors at steadily increasing ratios of functionality to price, and yet still reap billions while its customers freely shop the world market for the best bargain. Why can't Pfizer do the same without having to wheedle special legal privileges from Washington?
Re:Expert:Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People A (Score:3, Interesting)
As yet another researcher in the pharma industry: bullshit. Big companies go after projects that are lower risk with their own money, but I've seen quite a few experimental drugs for smaller issues or for higher risk projects be funded by startup companies, usually by companies founded by researchers out of universities. The base research was done by a university lab, and the final push and trials is done by a company and funded through a combination of VC money, some NIH grants, and funding from large pharma companies. Just this year in San Diego Lumena Pharmaceuticals raised a Series B of $45M to fund trials for several treatments on rare liver diseases. If this company makes it through trials, it'll be bought by a bigger pharma like J&J who will then distribute it.
This is where the higher risk pharma work is being done.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lumena-pharmaceuticals-raises-45-million-in-series-b-financing-249420571.html