Bill Gates Urges Investing in Faster Development for Life-Saving Drugs (nytimes.com) 58
The Covid-19 pandemic "would look very different if scientists had been able to develop a treatment sooner," writes Bill Gates, in a guest essay Friday in the New York Times. This ultimately would've reduced fatalities — "and it may have been harder for myths and misinformation to spread the way they did."
But note that Gates said "treatment" — not vaccine. Gates believes most people in the public health community had expected an effective treatment would appear before vaccines became available. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Safe, effective Covid vaccines were available within a year — a historic feat — but treatments that could keep large numbers of people out of the hospital were surprisingly slow out of the gate....
In late 2021, a few of their efforts paid off — not as soon as would have been ideal, but still in time to have a big impact. Merck and its partners developed an antiviral called molnupiravir, which was shown to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization or death for people at high risk. Soon after, another oral antiviral, Paxlovid, made by Pfizer, also proved to be very effective, reducing the risk of severe illness or death by nearly 90 percent among high-risk, unvaccinated adults. These drugs are useful tools for combating the pandemic, but they arrived much later than they should have and, for many, they are still difficult to access....
It's a mistake to think of vaccines as the star of the show and therapeutics as the opening act you would just as soon skip. We're lucky that scientists made Covid vaccines as quickly as they did — if they hadn't, the death toll would be far worse. But in the event of another pandemic, even if the world is able to develop a vaccine for a new pathogen in 100 days, it will still take a long time to get the vaccine to most of the population.... With good therapeutics, the risk of severe illness and death could drop significantly, and countries could decide to loosen restrictions on schools and businesses, reducing the disruption to education and the economy. What's more, imagine how people's lives would change if we're able to take the next step by linking testing and treatment. Anyone with early symptoms that might indicate Covid (or any other viral disease) could walk into a pharmacy or clinic anywhere in the world, get tested and, if positive for the virus, walk out with antivirals to take at home....
In short, although therapeutics didn't rescue us from Covid, they hold a lot of promise for saving lives and preventing future outbreaks from crippling health systems. But to make the most of that promise, the world needs to invest in the research and systems we'll need to find treatments much faster. That's why my foundation has supported a therapeutics accelerator at Duke University, but broader initiatives will be necessary to make lasting change. This will require substantial investment to bring together academia, industry and the latest software tools. But if we succeed, the next time the world faces an outbreak, we'll save millions more lives.
Gates offers several specific recommendations — including "investing in large libraries of drug compounds that researchers can quickly scan to see whether existing therapies work against new pathogens." And... With advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, it's now possible to use computers to identify weak spots on pathogens that we already know about, and we'll be able to do the same when new pathogens arise. These technologies are also speeding up the search for new compounds that will attack those weak spots. With adequate funding, various groups could take the most promising new compounds through Phase 1 studies even before there's an epidemic, or at least have several leads that can be turned into a product quickly once we know what the target looks like.
But note that Gates said "treatment" — not vaccine. Gates believes most people in the public health community had expected an effective treatment would appear before vaccines became available. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. Safe, effective Covid vaccines were available within a year — a historic feat — but treatments that could keep large numbers of people out of the hospital were surprisingly slow out of the gate....
In late 2021, a few of their efforts paid off — not as soon as would have been ideal, but still in time to have a big impact. Merck and its partners developed an antiviral called molnupiravir, which was shown to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization or death for people at high risk. Soon after, another oral antiviral, Paxlovid, made by Pfizer, also proved to be very effective, reducing the risk of severe illness or death by nearly 90 percent among high-risk, unvaccinated adults. These drugs are useful tools for combating the pandemic, but they arrived much later than they should have and, for many, they are still difficult to access....
It's a mistake to think of vaccines as the star of the show and therapeutics as the opening act you would just as soon skip. We're lucky that scientists made Covid vaccines as quickly as they did — if they hadn't, the death toll would be far worse. But in the event of another pandemic, even if the world is able to develop a vaccine for a new pathogen in 100 days, it will still take a long time to get the vaccine to most of the population.... With good therapeutics, the risk of severe illness and death could drop significantly, and countries could decide to loosen restrictions on schools and businesses, reducing the disruption to education and the economy. What's more, imagine how people's lives would change if we're able to take the next step by linking testing and treatment. Anyone with early symptoms that might indicate Covid (or any other viral disease) could walk into a pharmacy or clinic anywhere in the world, get tested and, if positive for the virus, walk out with antivirals to take at home....
In short, although therapeutics didn't rescue us from Covid, they hold a lot of promise for saving lives and preventing future outbreaks from crippling health systems. But to make the most of that promise, the world needs to invest in the research and systems we'll need to find treatments much faster. That's why my foundation has supported a therapeutics accelerator at Duke University, but broader initiatives will be necessary to make lasting change. This will require substantial investment to bring together academia, industry and the latest software tools. But if we succeed, the next time the world faces an outbreak, we'll save millions more lives.
Gates offers several specific recommendations — including "investing in large libraries of drug compounds that researchers can quickly scan to see whether existing therapies work against new pathogens." And... With advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, it's now possible to use computers to identify weak spots on pathogens that we already know about, and we'll be able to do the same when new pathogens arise. These technologies are also speeding up the search for new compounds that will attack those weak spots. With adequate funding, various groups could take the most promising new compounds through Phase 1 studies even before there's an epidemic, or at least have several leads that can be turned into a product quickly once we know what the target looks like.
Effective? (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't seem to be all that effective to me.
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bill gates.
if you are bill gates.
those therapies can not come soon enough
Re:Burying the lede (Score:5, Informative)
They changed the definition because of right wing talking points.
The previous definition could be interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine.
https://www.iflscience.com/hea... [iflscience.com]
Re:Burying the lede (Score:5, Insightful)
They changed the definition because of right wing talking points.
The previous definition could be interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine.
https://www.iflscience.com/hea... [iflscience.com]
To that, I would add that they didn't actually change the definition. From a medical perspective, the old and new definitions mean exactly the same thing. They changed the *wording* of the definition because the *vernacular* meaning of the original word (the meaning as understood by non-medically trained people) had drifted over time to imply an absolute level of protection that is *not* implied by its medical meaning.
They changed it because people who did not have a medical background were misunderstanding precise medical terminology, interpreting it using a layperson definition that is very different from how that medical term should be interpreted in context, and making incorrect assumptions as a result.
But of course, being a bunch of chronic liars, the same far-right wing-nuts who were lying about the vaccine before just found a new way to spin their lies, because that's all they know how to do, and so the great fiction that they "changed the definition so the COVID vaccine would qualify" became the new talking point, which is arguably worse than the lies we had before, because now there's a government paper trail that can be used to convince the uneducated that their incorrect beliefs were right all along.
And this is what happens when you try to pander to the uneducated by simplifying the wording of everything into terms that they can understand instead of educating them about what those words mean. The CDC should have clarified inline or at the bottom of the definition that in the context of medicine, the word "immunity" means resistance to a pathogen, not absolute protection from it. And that would have both corrected any misunderstanding *and* knocked the legs out from under the trolls who keep pushing their false narrative that the COVID vaccine isn't a vaccine. But instead, they chose to simplify their wording to avoid confusion, and by so doing, they created even more confusion.
As Einstein put it, one should make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. The CDC tried to reduce a medical definition written for adults down to a third-grade level of vocabulary. That's simpler than is actually possible, which is why it was a mistake.
Re: Burying the lede (Score:3)
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Re: Burying the lede (Score:2)
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Well the mrna vaccine technology was being developed for a long time. They diverted it to work on covid but its original idea was for a aids vaccine I think. So big pharma had been testing its potential to be a vaccine delivery for quite some time.
There was a early attempt to use it for HIV/AIDS, but it was unsuccessful because it was before they figured out how to use modified nucleosides to keep the infected cells from freaking out and triggering in inflammatory response.
I think that the first *viable* use was for cancer treatment.
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Wow that's a lot of random text to not refute what is being said.
It only seems random because you didn't understand it. I'll try again.
Where are all thousands/millions of people not only getting mumps/rubella/etc once after getting vaccinated, but getting it MULTIPLE TIMES after having multiple vaccinations AND booster shots.
Rubella? That's close enough to eradication that there aren't many cases period. In the U.S., there are only about 10 cases per year. However, from 2004 to 2008, only about two-thirds of cases [cdc.gov] were in people known to have not been vaccinated. How many of the remaining third were vaccinated is unknown.
Mumps? 94 percent of mumps cases are among people who are fully vaccinated. [nbcnews.com]
And what about measles, while we're talking about the part
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They changed the definition because of right wing talking points.
If you have to change a definition to win an argument you never had a valid argument.
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One of the interesting things about getting older is having more of the past to remember.
90% effectiveness, or 80% effectiveness, ain't "bad" by vaccine standards.
What would be bad is something like 10%. W
Thalidomide (Score:3, Informative)
I guess he never herd of thalidomide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
He is old enough to have seen the results, someone in my neighborhood had real bad defects due to the use of this drug.
Looks like Drug Industry is trying to follow the Finance Industry in removing all safeguards.
All New Drugs carry Risks (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same for vaccines. The main reason I took the Covid vaccine was that it was very clear that the risk of death from Covid was much, much higher than any possible rare side effect from the vaccine. When you have a disease with a ~1% chance of death you do not need much testing to show that your drug or vaccination is safer than that.
Re: All New Drugs carry Risks (Score:4, Interesting)
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Ah --- Thalidomide is NOT a vaccine.
Thalidomide was commonly used as an anti-morning sickness treatment. It was found to cause sever birth defects. It did not pass muster by the FDA in the US but was used in Canada, GB, Spain, NZ and Australia - too mention a few.
Thalidomide is still in use today used for treating "Multiple myeloma Erythema nodosum leprosum Prevent recurrence of cutaneous ENL lesions Recurrent aphthous stomatitis". Your analogy just sucks.
Penicillin is not a vaccine either and it is not
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No. Fight for the generics (Score:4, Informative)
Educate the public about how the drug companies extend patents by underhanded means. Allow govt to negotiate prices like any other large buyer.
summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Smartest guy in the world says "we should do something".
epidemiologists, virologists and people who knew a lot more than Bill Gates than a pandemic was going to get here, whether we liked it or not.
Then it gets here and everybody is "did you see that Bill Gates TED talk where he warned us about the possibility of a pandemic ?". Never mind that the warnings had been there all along.
Seriously, WTF ?
So basically we only listen to experts when we hear a billionaire repeat it ?
now the billionaire says "we should do something". You know who's doing something ? Biden. He's increasing the budgets in the NIH and other agencies so that these techniques can be used to actually get something done. And hopefully it will be done so that the drugs can be more easily and economically available for everyone, instead of having to pay monopoly prices subsidized by the government because "free market".
Bill Gates should talk about how the "private" healthcare system doesn't fucking work in this country and it's because of too rich assholes like him who think we should maintain the status quo.
Re: summary (Score:2)
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It always irks me that Gates gets credibility as some kind of expert on everything. Based on his hsitory, it's likely that he knows quite a bit about programming and cut-throat business practices. It's likely that he knows very little about social graces. As far as any other subject matter goes, I wouldn't give him any more credence than the average schmo.
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Given Gate's association with Epstein, perhaps one should give him less credence than the average schmo on any other subject.
"My shopping list confirms my expertise" (Score:2)
From: "I Bought Myself A Politician - MonaLisa Twins (Original)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://monalisa-twins.com/lyr... [monalisa-twins.com]
"As universal scientist and generous philanthropist
My shopping list confirms my expertise"
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That's not what he said. He said we should invest more. And yes, it is something experts already knew.. so what? Experts knew, and were working on electric cars (example: AC Propulsion tzero), re-usable rockets (example, NASA DC-X, Masten Aerospace Xombie etc.), and self driving cars. But then, there was very little investment in it. And the people working on it had no business skills or money. Do you remember when Elon Musk when to AC Propulsion to invest in their electric car, and they told him to fuck of
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not good business (Score:1)
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Cure Vs Prevention vs Treatment (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the major flaws in our plutocratic (NOT capitalistic) health care system is that it treats Cures, Prevention, and Treatments differently.
The honest truth is that treatments are far more more profitable than preventive measures, which are far more profitable than cures. Treatments are forever and the patients will pay anything for them. Preventatives must be used by all that are susceptible, so we require them to be cheaper. Cures are one use, and only on those that are sick, so total cost for the population is much less.
But that is the exact opposite of what the patients desire. We prefer cures, like prevention, but are only willing to accept treatments. Cures end the problem. Prevention may decrease it for society but do nothing for those already ill - and require far more effort by the society. Treatment will help, but it still leaves you sick, only ameliorating the symptoms.
Given this situation, society should treat these three things differently as a matter of law and economics.
Cures cure be tax free profits. Prevention could be given long patent rights. But treatments should be heavily taxed with limited patent rights. We do NOT want those treatments to be used forever, we want preventives and cures to be developed.
For example, we want ALL the pharmaceutical companies to actively look for a cure for Diabetes and chlorestal, rather than doing their best to keep the Insulin and Statin money train running.
Re:Cure Vs Prevention vs Treatment (insightful!) (Score:2)
Thank you for that insightful post on the different socio-econo-health implications of Cure Vs Prevention vs Treatment!
Re:Cure Vs Prevention vs Treatment (cure examples) (Score:1)
There is already a "cure" for Type II diabetes based on lifestyle/nutritional change (which also greatly reduces Type I complications too) -- but it is not generally profitable to push it:
"The End of Diabetes: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Diabetes (Eat for Life)" by Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
https://www.amazon.com/End-Dia... [amazon.com]
"The New York Times bestselling author of Eat to Live and Super Immunity and one of the country's leading experts on preventive medicine offers a scientifically proven, practical
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I am disappointed in your long, rambling, response full of logical errors. What you call cures are preventions, not cures. As directly stated in the NYT article. They literally said it prevented diabetes, when the author had presented it, falsely, as a cure. Trying to pretend a preventive method is a cure is the work of a scam artist trying to sell it. Worse, it is not effective.
Too often we like to blame people for things that are not always there fault. If most people cannot stick to your preventiv
Re:Cure Vs Prevention vs Treatment (miracles?) (Score:2)
If someone has a life-threatening debilitating illness (like Type II diabetes) and they make some change recommended by a health care practitioner and every aspect of their illness goes away for the rest of their life (plus the side effects are only that they feel great and live longer with more mental clarity), what would most people call that? Prevention? Cure? Or something else, like a "miracle"? :-)
Unlike a diet of pills, people are adapted for hundreds of thousands of years to eat a diet heavy in veget
Unfair Comparison (Score:2)
even if the world is able to develop a vaccine for a new pathogen in 100 days, it will still take a long time to get the vaccine to most of the population
True, but that would also apply to a new drug as well so how is this an advantage over vaccines?
Ideally, we want both a vaccination and a treatment. The vaccination will massively reduce the number of people getting seriously ill and the treatment is needed for those unfortunate enough to still get sick because no vaccination is perfect.
I'm not sure why the development time for a new drug to treat Covid was regarded as "slow" though. What is the typical time to develop new drug treatments? It took th
Re: Unfair Comparison (Score:1)
Wrong argument. (Score:3)
1. For two possible interventions (vaccine, therapeutics) that carry the equivalent risk, prevention is preferable to treatment.
2. This argument is specious:
But in the event of another pandemic, even if the world is able to develop a vaccine for a new pathogen in 100 days, it will still take a long time to get the vaccine to most of the population....
It will also take a long time to get a new therapeutic to most of the population. And it definitely won't take 100 days to create it. Making a vaccine is a much, much simpler task than making a drug that selectively interferes with a pathogen without harming the human.
Yes, we should put effort into therapeutics for COVID-19 and other diseases. There will always be breakthrough infections or instances where vaccines just wouldn't be effective (e.g., immunocompromised patients), such that therapeutics are the last, perhaps only, line of defense. But prevention is far more desirable than treatment.
We eradicated smallpox through vaccination, not treatment. We're close to doing the same with polio. We have a fighting chance still of doing it with TB and measles. The distant horizon looks good for HPV, and therefore cervical cancer, if certain parts of society can get over themselves and let all children be vaccinated.
Even at the individual level, prevention is better than treatment: in terms of impact to your daily life, you can either (a) get a shot or two, each maybe taking up 30 minutes of your life, scheduled at your convenience, or (b) get sick at some random point in time and seek treatment which means going to a doctor, maybe being checked into a hospital, feeling like crap for multiple days until the therapeutics start working, etc. Option A is less of a disruption than doing the weekly grocery shopping. Option B is at very least a full day, possibly much more, at a time you cannot control.
Prevention is a better strategy than relying on treatment.
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Your arguments are logical on the surface of it, but they're missing a couple of key points:
1) Drugs, unlike vaccines, can be reused to treat illnesses beyond their original target. This was in fact the case with COVID, and had drug trials been better coordinated, plenty of hospital beds could arguably have been freed up, especially pre-vaccine and in areas of the world where vaccine distribution was behind the curve. Because we're talking about existing drugs, potentially in generic form, they can be more
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https://www.voanews.com/a/covid-19-researchers-see-hope-in-existing-drugs/6432976.html
https://www.biopath.ph/study-identifies-3-existing-drugs-that-may-help-treat-covid-19/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/3-existing-drugs-fight-coronavirus-with-almost-100-success-in-jerusalem-lab/
There's 8 drugs for you mentioned in those three articles: fluvoxamine (anti-depressant), budesonide (inhaled s
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Let governments help universities research (Score:2)
Re: Let governments help universities research (Score:2)
Thalidomide (Score:2)
was used everywhere but the U.S., where the FDA would not allow its use.
Unwritten assumption (Score:2)
Bill Gates appears to assume that, for every virus, there will be one or more chemical that will provide a therapeutic effect against it.
Why should this always be true?
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That's a very good point, and is the reason we have precious few effective treatments against fungal infections. While there is substantial ongoing research to develop therapeutics against fungal infections, the biochemical distance between fungus and mammal is far less than the distance between bacterium and virus and mammal, making the discovery of such drugs challenging. It's hard to find things that will kill fungi and won't also kill people.
If humanity is ultimately going to be wiped out by a pathogen
There's something wrong with Gates... (Score:2)
First, the guy's insanely wealthy (not that there's anything wrong with THAT) and he's on the record (both in interviews and on video (see: YouTube)) saying investing in vaccines is the best investment he's ever made [cnbc.com] (and he's not just talking ethics...he's talking cash returns). He's 66 years old, there's no way he can ever spend the money he has before he dies, and he's taken a pledge to not pass it on to any kids... and he's certainly not going to take that cash with him to the great beyond in a gold enc
Financial obesity is not healthy (Score:2)
Was not sure if this was sarcasm or not: "First, the guy's insanely wealthy (not that there's anything wrong with THAT)"?
But financial obesity can definitely be both a personal problem and a societal problem. Politically, it's been said "Every Billionaire is a Policy Failure." Both personally and socially, there are all sorts of problems created by great wealth disparities because such societies are in general unhappier for everyone.
Financial obesity is a term I first read with surprise in James P. Hogan's
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