> From: Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > --- The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > This is nonsense. Eli Lilly spent almost $1BB > > taking > > > Prozac from nothing to molecule to market. Do you > > > know how much Lilly makes off Prozac in the US > > right > > > now? Essentially nothing. Not even a rounding > > error. > > > Lilly lost most of its Prozac market share in > > _weeks_
Most likely because of price. You can't tell me that a company given a 17 year monopoly can't make a drug just as cheaply as a newcomer. > > > > Because the process to make prozac was in the patent > > filing? > > Since generic drug manufacturers often use a different > process, I doubt that had much to do with it. Look, a > drug is a molecule mated with a delivery system. > That's all it is. Most drugs are actually fairly > simple molecues (in relative terms). It's not that > hard to figure out how to make a molecule, and > everyone knows how to do it. The delivery systems are > also usually fairly easy to manufacture, and quite > often generic drug markers develop new ones > (sometimes, better ones), so the patent application > doesn't help them there either. Manufacturing is the > cheapest and easiest part of the pharmaceutical > industry for 99 drugs out of 100. So your saying almost the entire cost of making a drug is the FDA approval process w/ clinical trial? Sound like something the government should be funding to me. > > > Good. Competition is always good, no matter what > > you say. > > [snip] > > > I think the government should do the reasearch, > > spend the tax dollars so > > everyone can have good cost effective medicines, > > that are cheap to make. > > The government has no interest in making a profit, > > but it does have a > > very stong interest of raising the health level of > > the people. > > You see, perhaps, the conflict between your two > statements here? The government faces no competition. Surely a government can compete with other governments?, or with corporations? Or with itself? But you don't necessarily need competition when you are doing something without a strict profit (research). > Government funds are spent politically and, on the > whole, inefficiently. I love the NIH, but if I needed > a drug to save my life, I'd rather have Merck or > Pfizer believing that they could make a few billion > off of it than a couple of Senators thinking that > maybe they can get 3% in the opinion polls by tucking > a rider into an appropriations bill on the topic. The Government can throw a much larger amount a money, and resources at any given problem, and should, that one of it's functions. And this new drug just proves my point. Corporations are too greedy to be in charge of finding cures and remedies to peoples problems. In fact it's not really in pharmaceutical companies best interest for people to get completely better, because they can get them fixed on taking x drug (which really only treats symptoms) forever, making them huge amounts of money. If they got better then they would stop taking the expensive drugs, which means less cash income for multi-million/billionaire CEO's. Is it in the interest of a democratic government to things like that? _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
