This is one of the most screwed up things ever!!

[rhino47]

A Cancer Drug Shows Promise, at a Price That Many Can't Pay
By ALEX BERENSON
Published: February 15, 2006
Doctors are excited about the prospect of Avastin, a drug already widely used for colon cancer, as a crucial new treatment for breast and lung cancer, too. But doctors are cringing at the price the maker, Genentech, plans to charge for it: about $100,000 a year.

(snip)
Until now, drug makers have typically defended high prices by noting the cost of developing new medicines. But executives at Genentech and its majority owner, Roche, are now using a separate argument — citing the inherent value of life-sustaining therapies.If society wants the benefits, they say, it must be ready to spend more for treatments like Avastin and another of the company's cancer drugs, Herceptin, which sells for $40,000 a year.

"As we look at Avastin and Herceptin pricing, right now the health economics hold up, and therefore I don't see any reason to be touching them," said William M. Burns, the chief executive of Roche's pharmaceutical division and a member of Genentech's board. "The pressure on society to use strong and good products is there

.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/business/15drug.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=login&emc=th&adxnnlx=1140028175-YXDwM0rLfwiNkycPeVeHnA


Gouging the dying.How freaking unreal is that?
This is one of the most repulsive things I have seen.
I hope these bastards rot in hell for this.

[mikelewis]

1. There's a word for this...

it's called extortion...

"Your money or you life."

[rhino47]

5. My thoughts exactly mike

Outside the total lack of morals in this line of thinking "Your money or your life" it is very bad business.If they lowered the price more patients would buy it.

[ThomCat]

2. That should be illegal

After all, I'll bet public funding at was used to research that drug, and the research was probably done by researchers at public institutions. All the drug companies seem to do is market the final product and collect the profits.

[lyonn]

13. Question, was fed. govt. funds used in this research?

The drug companies never speak of this and yet we hear that the fed. govt. gives dollars for medical research. There must be a govt. site that lists where med. research money goes.

[ThomCat]

23. I doubt there's a coherent list.

Almost all medical research is done with money from the CDC, NIH, or even the Pentagon. Grants come from throughout the government. What department would know about all of it and bother to keep track? And what administration would allow that to happen? Big Pharma gives a hell of a lot of money to politicians to grease the skids.

[slor]

3. Why is this screwed up?

I mean really, if there is one thing the * regime should have taught you is...that poor people do not deserve to live. This was sarcasm of course.

[teriyaki jones]

7. "In George Bush's America, the only crime is being poor"

From a Rolling Stone article about the Enron trial that just started.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9257426/generation_enron?rnd=1139700416125&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.857

[JackintheGreen]

10. It's everywhere

My wife is having this argument on a MySpace feminist blog: the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor. That's the beauty of capitalism. You get what you deserve. You know, like those prisoners in Abu Ghraib. And so the dead are dead because they deserve to be dead. And the rich are rich because they deserve to screw the poor. And the wheels go 'round and 'round, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, and it comes out here...

[rhino47]

16. I myspace.I will have to look for her forum.

Though I do it with guilt since rupert bought myspace.

[TahitiNut]

18. That corruption in thinking goes back to the "Divine Right of Kings"

... the 'logic' of G-d designating the King as worldly custodian of all things 'owned' by G-d and arbiter of H-s earthly realm. It's the foundation upon which monarchies rested for millennia. The concommitant aggregations of riches and wealth was claimed to be 'divine favor.'

[Cats Against Frist]

30. In reality, it's not so much different than the

Pat Robertson, "god showers the blessed ones with prosperity." The only problem is, in today's world, it's like your average numbnut peasant is admiring his moss roof, and thinking that he's on par with the king.

News: King don't give a shit about Abner Freeper, his split-level, and his chevy.

[FormerRepublican]

4. The results of BushCo policies - they know they can get away with...

...anything (including kill people) as long as they fork over the $$$ to Bush and his hideous pals.

[reality based]

6. That's it. There are laws against profiteering. Send 'em to jail.

Seize the property they've used in committing their unconscionable drug related crimes.

[teriyaki jones]

9. LOL--where would you start

I'm pretty sure Halliburton isn't building those detention centers for their own ilk!

[mmonk]

8. "Free market", "Invisible Hand"

Immoral bastards.

[Ron Green]

12. These market apologists often talk about the Invisible Hand, but seldom

mention the Invisible Foot - that's the one upon the necks of the poor and unfortunate.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. How does this tie in with the medicare prescription benefit that

just went into effect?

Colon cancer mostly strikes the elderly, the nominal medicare patient.
The government cannot bargain for lower pricing by the pharma companies.
The patient makes the co-pay, and the government picks up the tab for the difference, paying $95,000 of the $100,000 cost.
Big pharma makes out like the fucking bandits they are, at taxpayer expense.

Am I wrong?

[rhino47]

14. There is a limit on some medicare plans isnt there?

I think it depends on if the medicine is administered in the hospital or outpatient.That at least is my experience with medicare during my grandmothers cancer fight.
Though you do have a very good point.Especially with the statement from the gouging bastards that said "health economy" would support the high price.

[lyonn]

20. Of course, the admin. isn't about to push a prescription plan

that would benefit the citizen. Another thing, What about smokers, how will we pick one of those gazillion plans that "might" cover my cancer drug needs should I need them. Mind boggling.

As I recall, when the tobacco companies got sued and were later required to make restitution and all they seem to be required to do is run adds telling us to quit smoking. Now why wasn't some sort of provision made to handle the medical liabilities that hospitals and Drs. would have to deal with since many smokers wouldn't have health insurance. Mind boggling.

[TahitiNut]

15. Profiteering from human suffering and misery is now given full rein.

It's an appalling corruption of capitalism ... an already inherently corrupt 'necessary evil.'

[Hubert Flottz]

17. What is the difference in this drug company doing this to a cancer

victim and unplugging someone on life support?

The person with cancer will go on living a normal life if they are cured of cancer, but someone who is brain dead has no chance of ever living a normal life...

Why are the bible bangers and the politicans who were worried so about the lady in Florida, not saying anything about this? Because the drug companies own the politicians in the GOP!

[rhino47]

22. Very good point Hubert.

This would send any person of moral values cringing.Bible bangers are rather quiet about this.

[Katherine Brengle]

19. Didn't you know you have to pay to be sick in America?

Things like this make me really proud to be an American today.

:sarcasm:

[skids]

21. Well, 3rd-world medical "tourism" is sure to pick up...

...one someone else manages to synthesise it.

[leeroysphitz]

24. These CAN be reverse engineered. Why isn't there a BLACK

MARKET for these things? Apart from making a run for the border to Canada. Any budding chemists want out there who want to go into business?

Intellectual property is theft.

[Patiod]

26. Biologics can't really be reverse engineered

It's not like they're a simple chemical compound -- they actually grown (and then maybe manipulated) from living organisms, rather than compounded from chemicals.

I'm fairly science-illiterate, but I work in the industry, and I know that biologics are 1) much more difficult to produce (vs. simpler chemical compounds) and 2) much pricier. They're more costly to product, but you can mark them up more -- which makes them VERY appealing to the pharmaceutical industry. I'm an amateur jeweler -- it's sort of like the way you make A LOT more for your labor working in gold, because people know that the raw material is costly, the demand for gold is high, so there's a higher tolerance for higher mark-ups.

I think 100K/yr is about the cost of treating a hemophiliac right now as well - just their factor alone is like $65K-70K/yr. It's the wave of the future, kids. An awful lot of the new cell-based treatments coming out are going to be appallingly expensive.

[SlipperySlope]

27. Kick! - You CANNOT simply reverse engineer biologics

The above poster speaks the truth. Biologics can't be simply reverse engineered and synthisized. The product is too dependent on the process.

As a rough analogy, consider a really great wine. The end product is dependent on the entire process that led to it; the soil and conditions the grapes were grown in, the skill of the winemaker in preparing and fermenting the grapes, the conditions under which the wine ages in a cask, and the conditions under which the bottled wine is stored.

If all these go perfectly, you end up with a great wine. If anything goes wrong, you get plonk.

Saying that you can just reverse engineer and synthesize a biological drug is kind of like saying you can reverse engineer and synthesize a fine wine. In theory, maybe you could, but in practice, technology has no way of doing what you propose.

Because of this, even when biologics go off patent protection, it is entirely possible that there will never be affordable generics.

[Stinky The Clown]

25. Rotten motherfuckers .........

I hate to wish ill on anyone, but I hope, for this guy, that the hole in the end of his penis closes tight and he explodes.

Motherfucker ........

[Yollam]

28. The blase cruelty of that statement brought tears to my eyes.

We are literally surrounded by soulless vampires. I honestly and sincerely hope that this man immediately succumbs to a drug resistant strain of cancer. What a horrible, evil sick worldview. I feel ashamed to be an American reading garbage like this.

I hope Satan is sharpening up his torture implements right now for Mr. Burns and his cohorts.

Mr. Burns?

[rhino47]

29. LOL his name is BURNS

good pick on that Yollam.