• @clausetrophobic@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Fuck off with the big pharma apologetics.

    Boo hoo the corporation got millions in taxpayer money to develop a vaccine and now they have to profit off of it. I feel so bad for them.

    This is subtle astroturfing.

    • just another dev
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      489 months ago

      By that same logic: it costs a couple of cents to burn a dvd or to transfer a few gigabytes, yet games costs $60.

      All the commenter above you is saying is don’t mix up the cost to develop with the cost to mass produce,

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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        199 months ago

        I’m going to be unreasonable because I don’t like the ethics behind Pharma companies.

        They should eat the loss; their research was healthily subsidised by the taxpayer

        • @FMT99@lemmy.world
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          219 months ago

          I’m personally of the opinion that all medical research should be tax funded. But given our current situation, if you tell these companies to ‘eat the loss’ they will simply stop producing new medicines.

          • @pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
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            119 months ago

            Oh stop. The government should be running the pharaceutical industry then, not private companies.

            Stop simping for evil corporations that don’t give a shit about you.

            • @FMT99@lemmy.world
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              39 months ago

              Reading comprehension is tough I know. I indeed believe essential services including medical research should be government run.

              But since that is not the case right now you can’t expect companies to operate on a non profit basis. If stating obvious facts is simping then I guess you can call me a simp.

                • @FMT99@lemmy.world
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                  29 months ago

                  Jesus christ do you talk to every one this way? No wonder no one listens to the left.

                  • @pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
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                    19 months ago

                    Lol scratch a simp and a fascist bleeds. But we all knew who you really are and what you’re all about.

                    You can go ahead and get the last word if you feel the overwhelming need to satisfy your anger by winning an argument against me on the internet. I’m sure all of those weeping pharma CEOs will praise their thanks for your service.

          • gordon
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            39 months ago

            Oh no, whatever will we do if old dudes can’t have 6 different types of boner pills?

            • @Same@lemmy.world
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              109 months ago

              Pharma companies spend a majority of their time trying to make new unique drugs, they just fail most of the time. The ones that succeed tend to be ones that are similar to ones that succeeded in the last, which is why you get multiple drugs in the same class, but it’s not all they do. For example, we’ve essentially cured some types of cystic fibrosis, and there’s an effective vaccine for malaria now - all developed in the last 10 years.

              I don’t want to pretend that the big pharma companies aren’t evil, but they do have incentives that align with improving human health.

      • be_excellent_to_each_other
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        99 months ago

        All the commenter above you is saying is don’t mix up the cost to develop with the cost to mass produce,

        That cost to develop was likely not borne by Pfizer in the first place.

        https://jacobin.com/2023/09/big-pharma-research-and-development-new-drugs-buybacks-biden-medicare-negotiation

        Last year, the three largest US-listed pharmaceutical companies by revenues, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck, spent a combined $39.6 billion on R&D. That is, admittedly, a lot of money. But less than Medicare is currently paying on just ten drugs

        While Big Pharma holds vast portfolios of existing patents for prescription drugs, the innovation pipeline for new drugs actually has very little to do with Big Pharma. In reality, public sources — especially the NIH — fund the basic research that makes scientific breakthroughs. Then small, boutique biotech and pharmaceutical firms take that publicly generated knowledge and do the final stages of research, like running clinical trials, that get the drugs to market. The share of small companies in the supply of new drugs is huge, and it’s still growing. Fully two-thirds of new drugs now come from these small companies, up from one-third twenty years ago. It is not the research labs of Pfizer that are developing new drugs.

      • @Saxoboneless@lemmy.world
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        59 months ago

        …and the video game industry makes more money than any other entertainment industry. Yes, these things should cost more than just their production cost, but there is currently an obscene amount of money being made by the people at the top of these industries - y’know, the ones whose main role in making and distributing the product is just already being obscenely wealthy. And while I don’t really care if AAA games are overpriced if they’re only $60, I do care if life-saving meds are being held for ransom.

        Do y’all need reminded that insulin, a life-or-death drug that’s been around since the fucking 1920s, only costs at most $10 to make but currently retails for up to $300 a vial? It does not fucking matter whether or not this particular treatment should cost $13 or $90, the markup on any life saving drug being over 1,000% is blatant price gauging at the expense of human life, and the fact that the pharmaceutical industry does this all the time is common fucking knowledge. Anything approaching a defense of this shit either is in fact astroturfing or is so braindead as to call it a necessity that a publicly traded company demand the sick either choose debt or the grave.

    • RBG
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      109 months ago

      Guess this comment of mine will also get deleted but here goes nothing.

      The article is about antiviral medicine, not a vaccine. So you are getting angry at the wrong thing.