Rent-seeking in the modern pharmaceutical market

[agamemnus]

An AIDS drug is a drug that is used to treat AIDS.

[Dreadnaught]

Martin Shkreli did a reddit IamA in a marathon session that lasted several hours through the middle of the night and several hours in the morning.

He answered hundreds of questions, including some of my own. Thinking about it in its totality, what he did isn't really that nefarious, especially as he claims to want to advance research in the area of toxoplasmosis. As a trader and a biotech investor he knew that he would definitely need a huge cushion to pay for research and having the only FDA-approved generic (an NDA) for the drug does that, and is synergistic (at least, in terms of marketing) with development of a new/better drug.

That's really interesting, going to read this...

Jesus I hate the layout of fucking Reddit.

[LittleFuzzy]

An AIDS drug is a drug that is used to treat AIDS.

There isn't a treatment for AIDS. HIV is a disease, AIDS is not. An AIDS drug is a drug used to manage the AIDS condition, including treating/mitigating the opportunistic infections arising from that condition. Of which Toxo is the single most common. The drugs we use in chemotherapy are cancer drugs. They're also used in treating other conditions. That doesn't mean they suddenly aren't cancer drugs.

[GGT]

There isn't a treatment for AIDS. HIV is a disease, AIDS is not. An AIDS drug is a drug used to manage the AIDS condition, including treating/mitigating the opportunistic infections arising from that condition. Of which Toxo is the single most common. The drugs we use in chemotherapy are cancer drugs. They're also used in treating other conditions. That doesn't mean they suddenly aren't cancer drugs.

Fuzzy, there IS treatment/therapy for Auto Immune Diseases (AIDs). What makes you say HIV is a disease, but AIDS is not?

[wiggin]

AIDS is not 'autoimmune diseases'. It stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It is most definitely not related to treatments for autoimmune diseases, which generally involve suppressing the (over)action of the immune system in some way.

Rather, AIDS is the collection of symptoms and diseases that typically arise following an untreated HIV infection, mostly as a result of the completely absent immune system in untreated HIV-infected patients. It was first described when physicians noticed groups of young, otherwise healthy patients coming into the hospital with extremely rare or unlikely diseases. Eventually, the cause of AIDS was proven to be the destruction of the immune system secondary to infection with the newly discovered HIV retrovirus.

Fuzzy's point is that one of the largest current-day patient populations that need drugs to treat toxoplasmosis infection are those suffering from AIDS (toxo is rarely dangerous except in people with compromised immune systems). Thus, it is hardly a misnomer (though certainly less than precise) to call the drug in question an 'AIDS drug', though it can obviously be used to treat toxo infections in the broader population.

[GGT]

AIDS is not 'autoimmune diseases'. It stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It is most definitely not related to treatments for autoimmune diseases, which generally involve suppressing the (over)action of the immune system in some way.

Rather, AIDS is the collection of symptoms and diseases that typically arise following an untreated HIV infection, mostly as a result of the completely absent immune system in untreated HIV-infected patients. It was first described when physicians noticed groups of young, otherwise healthy patients coming into the hospital with extremely rare or unlikely diseases. Eventually, the cause of AIDS was proven to be the destruction of the immune system secondary to infection with the newly discovered HIV retrovirus.

Fuzzy's point is that one of the largest current-day patient populations that need drugs to treat toxoplasmosis infection are those suffering from AIDS (toxo is rarely dangerous except in people with compromised immune systems). Thus, it is hardly a misnomer (though certainly less than precise) to call the drug in question an 'AIDS drug', though it can obviously be used to treat toxo infections in the broader population.

And my point is that illness, and patients' ability to pay, too often drives public health initiatives and national funding.

"Acquired" illnesses usually blame the patient, and not their employers, as some genetic experiment.

[LittleFuzzy]

And my point is that illness, and patients' ability to pay, isn't what drives public health initiatives for national funding.

That. . . does not look like any point so much as referenced in imagination by the sentence "Fuzzy, there IS treatment/therapy for Auto Immune Diseases (AIDs). What makes you say HIV is a disease, but AIDS is not?"

[GGT]

Feel free to post your opinions, Fuzzy. You're a gay male twin, living on the west coast.

[Wraith]

Seriously, GGT?

[Loki]

The queen of non-sequitur strikes again.

[wiggin]

I am literally at a loss for words.

[LittleFuzzy]

Feel free to post your opinions, Fuzzy. You're a gay male twin, living on the west coast.

What it is you think any of those things have to do with each other or with "public health initiatives for national funding" is beyond me. Is this some kind of aphasia?

[Aimless]

Come on GGT you know better than to try to trick Fuzzy into making an unnecessarily personal/private comment see above for clarification re. definitions too.

[GGT]

Yeah, I shouldn't have gotten into a semantics argument (between aggie and fuzzy) about what's a disease and whether pharmaceuticals treat or cure. I also shouldn't have made a personal comment to you, Fuzzy, and I'm sorry for that. Also sorry for appealing to emotions, in an attempt to get back to what *rent-seeking in modern pharmaceutical markets* means to begin with. Mea Culpa.

The truth is....there IS an emotional component to any debate about medicine and healthcare, because it impacts human lives. There's been a political component over history, too....where government funds for R & D have been attached to the "moral values" of taxpayers. And in the US it's common to be emotional about the morality of public policy and tax dollars.