Hacker News Reader

Comment by sethbannon | Hacker News Reader

Not as much profit in this as in little blue pills, so it simply won't be a priority for big pharma, unfortunately.

Really? I'm bet it has to do with further testing. You could give a little bit of credit to GlaxoSmithKline for working on this for 24 years. This isn't exactly a good example of "big pharma" greed.

If it was indeed made by GlaxoSmithKline, then this is a good example of "big pharma" greed. Only, in this case, "big pharma" greed might end up saving millions of lives.

That all depends on the price. If the price is reasonable then fine. But typically big pharma that gets a lock-in on 'life' is anything but reasonable in their pricing, after all, what's the value of a human life.

The 5% profits over costs is promising, even if it leaves some wiggle room.

However awesome the result, they're not in it out of charity. They will want a return on those 24 years of investment.

I've seen the Moving Goalposts enough in the past. You're probably one of the ones who argued that Big Pharma would never allow the discovering of a vaccine because vaccines aren't profitable enough. Today must not have been a good day for you.

October is Vaccine Damage Awareness Month. If Big Pharma is doing this, it must be because it will cause Vaccine Damage.

(No, I'm not a nutcase, but, yes, this really is Vaccine Damage Awareness Month. 'Tis the season to kill people by demonizing an extremely safe form of preventative treatment by spreading baseless rumors to sow irrational fear.)

@cjy, you might be right. We should give them credit for this. I'm just pretty cynical when it comes to the pharma industry.

They've mentioned that their goal is to make 5% profit above the cost. Even at 20%, it seems reasonable for something that took about 24 years to create. Hopefully they'll stick by their word.

Let's hope they start with the actual costs of manufacturing, and not tack on 24 years of research and the cost of large scale clinical trials.

GSK has a mixed history when it comes to stuff like this, let's hope they do the right thing here. I note they didn't say the doses will cost at most 'x' (which they should have a pretty good idea of by now).

why would you not tack on 24 years of research and the cost or large scale clinical trials?

if GSK didn't pay for those, the malaria vaccine wouldn't exist; those are real costs that GSK paid. if they were always compensated on certain drugs only based on cost of manufacturing, they would simply never research those drugs.

Wait, are you implying big pharma doesn't make saving lives a priority? I wonder if presidential candidates know this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com