It's interesting that lead billing goes to the doctors who injected the drug into a pregnant woman rather than the pharmaceutical company that developed it. "Doctors" cure patients of disease; "drug companies" rip off consumers.
That is an extremely glib view. There are “some” drug companies that rip off people. The problem with pricing in the Rx world is the high cost and unpredictable nature of discovering new drugs.
Profit margin of tech companies is twice that of Rx companies. Would you say that tech companies are ripping people off?
http://www.businessinsider.com/sector-profit-margins-sp-500-...
All of Health vs All of Tech - yes, you are right. Tech is about double.
But Pharma, Biotech, Life Sciences show better returns over Tech as a whole and virtually equivalent Software & Services return.
I would argue that there are definitely players in the Tech space that are raking some very hefty profits, but are in highly competitive markets that could see that erode into losses very quickly... I do not think we are quite in the realm of price gouging and the lower barriers to entry in most of tech keeps things from swinging too far off the charts.
Please stay on-topic! Well, Facebook is collecting data and selling it to pharma companies for probably more than advertising, I suppose. Yes, they are part of the problem. I'm not generalizing who's at fault, but there is a problem.
It's not really even an invention, it's a human protein that was probably identified in academic research a long time before the company decided to produce it and see if it could be used as a treatment.
The pharmaceutical company was not directly involved in this.