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Comment by sparks1970 | Hacker News Reader

sparks1970

I work in this industry and this doesn't ring true.

It would never be the case that a single researcher does some tests and reports them to the boss except in the very earliest stages of drug development. The "boss" in this situation would be another research scientist, far removed from business strategy.

Even then, success in a petri-dish doesn't mean much - it would be years of research with a large team to determine if it was safe and efficacious in human trials.

The idea that the pharma industry suppresses viable medicines because they are "too good" is just conspiracy theory.

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I'm not in the industry, but I've read a lot about how drugs get to market and this sounds valid. It takes a LOT of time and money for a drug company to get to the point of knowing how safe and effective a drug is in humans. That's pretty much the last step of drug manufacturing.

By the time a company has spent that amount of research effort and money, there's no way they'd just abandon a drug because it isn't rent seeking enough. Businesses want to recover whatever investment they can.

If a company is aware that a new drug could cure a previously managed disease, it’s pretty obvious that you’d like to be the one pocketing any available profits before a competitor does. The conspiracy only works to the extent that nobody else in the world could create the same drug, and that every person aware of its existence is prepared to keep it secret and lose out on the money to be made selling it.

That too. The only way to prevent competition would be to patent the drug... and if you did that but didn't release the drug it'd be a REAL bad look.

There's little reason NOT to make money on a developed drug.

> that nobody else in the world could create the same drug

Could create it and make a profit selling it.

If the cure generates less profit than current treatment, and if you’re currently selling treatment, then that’s not going to be worth it for you.

If you don’t, well you still need to get it to market, which requires substantial investment.

My point is that the described scenario is not entirely unlikely. For example, type 1 diabetics in the US need something like $600 worth of insulin, every single month for the rest of their lives. Say that’s 60 years, you’re looking at $430k, not even counting needles, sensors, and other stuff they might need (or absolutely need). Average patients won’t be able to cough up nearly as much for a cure.

Pharma has just been way faster than tech in realizing that the subscription model has far better yields.

In reality, a company will look at the cure and know that it will end the market in management. They will also understand that whoever brings the cure to market first will take the majority of the profits, and the other will just lose. A company will not refrain from selling a cure to protect the market share of its competitors.

Your idea only works if you believe there is a global conspiracy of businesses and scientists who all agree to embargo research into cures, and who are all willing to forgo any profits on the cure while also recognizing any scientist and company not in their conspiracy could wipe out their profits at any time.

Let me repeat. If treatment brings in more profit than cure, and you and your competitors have a treatment, then it is in none of your interests to bring out the cure, since anyone who does it would reduce their own profit besides killing that of their competitors.

There is no "global conspiracy" required at all. Not actively doing research towards reducing your own profit is enough.

Outsiders could theoretically come in, yes. But the hurdles are huge for biotech startups, and of course the established players are lobbying to keep it this way, so I won't be holding my breath. It's different from the tech world.

Any business who followed your logic would be then vulnerable to the first competitor who was willing to sell the cure instead. To prevent that from happening, it would take a global conspiracy of every company who could develop said drug, along with the complicity of every scientist who knew about said research and who would be tempted to develop or leak its it themselves.

Established players have no incentive to fund the research and every incentive to keep the difficulty of curing illnesses at scale high to keep new players out.

There is no need for a global conspiracy. Just a little lobbying.

Then we have the dental industry. Drill, fill, and bill, without much care for anything else. Not so much active suppression as it is neglecting anything that might disrupt the industry.

not to mention competition for ideas from gung ho biotech startups...

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