this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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HIV ‘vaccine’ could be made for just $40 a year for every patient (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

In a study presented at the 25th international Aids conference in Munich on Tuesday, experts calculated that the minimum price for mass production of a generic version, based on the costs of lenacapavir’s ingredients and manufacturing, and allowing for 30% profit, was $40 a year , assuming 10 million people used it annually. In the long-term, 60 million people would probably need to take the drug preventatively to lower HIV levels significantly, they said.

Accounting for 30% profit seems reasonable to me.

Yet they're selling it for 1000x the price.

I understand they need to recoup research costs, but...

I have no other words.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

The research cost recovery line they often yap about is bullshit itself though. The overwhelming majority of pharma research like the one involved here is subsidized through taxpayer dollars already, and they get tax incentives and write offs for failed research. If we had a sane, working government we could nationalize all life saving medications funded by public money while still allowing the inventors to enjoy some (reasonable) economic benefits from the research

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I understand they need to recoup research costs, but…

Except they don't even need to do that, because, as is with most pharmaceuticals, the research was almost fully funded by the taxpayer.

And the 30% profit is for a generic product, so the research has already been done.

So yeah, 30% profit is of course much better than 3000%, but both are still obscene profiteering off of a lifesaving product paid for by, and then essentially withheld for ransom from, the general public.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

cough I believe if 40$ means 30% profit, then the cost to produce it is 28$. With the current price of it being 42,250$, this means the profit rate is 42,250$/28$*100%=150,892%.

In words, one hundred fifty thousand percent.

It's insane. Even if I am wrong and it's 3000% or 30,000% profit on a product funded by tax-payer money, it's insane and should be criminal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah and insulin can be made for like $5.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

It is elsewhere in the world. The US is an exceptional case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I lost so many friends and lovers to AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Even my mom's first husband died of AIDS. A vaccine took way too long, and now that there is one this is what they do?!? The patents need to be voided and the vaccine distributed free of charge by amy clinic or hospital that takes federal funds.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Knowing you have HIV decreases transmission by 90%. Giving antivirals decreases transmission by 99%. Back in the early 2000 I saw a paper saying we could make HIV tests for 10 cents a person if we wanted to produce enough for every person on the planet (0.1810^9= $800 million). That was something that could have been done back then. $40 a vaccine would be a price tag of $320 billion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Even with PrEP distributed freely (with a prescription) HIV is still spreading. So unfortunately it's not purely a money problem. A vaccine you only have to take yearly would dramatically change the landscape of transmission.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

PrEP is very expensive. It is covered potentially partially by insurance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But think of all the lost profits that rich executives could make! /s

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Think of it as an investment. If you die of AIDS, you can never get high blood pressure, which means you can never buy drugs against high blood pressure!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

I think many people dramatically overestimate how profitable drug companies are. The average net profit for a brand-name drug manufacturer is actually less than 30% (source). They're about as profitable as tech companies.

That's still quite profitable, but I suspect that if you were to limit them to 30% net profits on their most successful blockbuster drugs, their overall net profits (which have to compensate for the R&D that goes into failed drugs) might not even be positive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why should drug companies be profitable at all? Seems like the perfect thing to be nationalized and/or even considered a basic necessity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Governments do have the option of simply buying the patent from the drug company (no communism necessary) but Americans have rejected socialized medicine for Americans. I don't expect that they would want to subsidize medicine for poor Africans.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think access to certain drugs that deeply impact the public health should be capped in the name of national security. Vaccines for AIDS, Flu, COVID-19, H1-N1, HPV, etc. and things like insulin, should be freely available to the public. Let the firms make money off of the thousands of other meds they push.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

In that scenario, why would drug companies bother to develop drugs that deeply impart public health? They already prioritize drugs for smaller numbers of rich people rather than drugs for larger numbers of poor people (e.g. antibiotics). If they can't make a large profit off of developing an AIDS vaccine, they're going to work on something like weight-loss drugs instead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Except the majority of the cutting edge R&D is done and/or funded via the public sector.

Their R&D budget priorities are more focused on things like reformulating existing drugs to extend the patents and prevent opening the market to generic manufacturers.

So yes, cheating patent laws and heavily spending on marketing and lobbying campaigns does eat into their profit margins a little bit.

But I'm not sure how that justifies their unparalleled track record of pathologically sadistic business practices, such as the one highlighted in this article.

Do you have a graph or chart for that?