A Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising HIV Therapy | Hacker News Reader

A Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising HIV Therapy

nytimes.com

37 pointsaaronharnly8 comments

The article links to these internal minutes and memos that seal the case:

(1) Minutes from a 2003 meeting where “ The recommendation of the Review Committee was to stop development due to the likelihood that GS- 7340 would ultimately cannibalize Viread regardless of its efficacy and safety profile.”

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/gilead-apr-2003/bb3fa...

2) A memo laying out that “Development of GS7340 is timed such that it is launched in 2015 with a six-year path to commercial launch.”

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/gilead-sept-2003/1561...

I think the key point in the memo is "The following assumptions were made for purposes of calculating the potential value of GS7340 as an exclusivity extension strategy: GS7340 exhibits incrementally better efficacy (greater antiviral log reduction when taken as a monotherapy) than Viread.

At the time the decision was made, nobody knew if the drug would be better. There were two possible outcomes if they made the investment now: a) the drug turns out to be a flop, the investment is lost or b) the drug turns out to be better.

And the decision was not "do we continue to develop this now", it was "do we develop this now, or spend the R&D dollars on something else".

It is true that the patent expiration was a factor, but the fact the drug turned out to be better is just 20/20 hindsight. If it had failed and Gilead flushed a few hundred million down the drain, nobody would have criticized the decision to delay the development.

I'm not really sure what "the problem" with this is? Like we all do know that the point of pharma companies is to make money, and that things like 'helping people' are just incidental byproducts of that fact.

If pharmaceutical development was government run, I'd understand the outage at lowering the quality of life of US citizens; but faceless corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime.

> I'm not really sure what "the problem" with this is?

I think you found it:

> corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime

The “problem” is that perverse incentives lead to unethical behavior that most would find distasteful and morally reprehensible.

I don’t understand the criteria for outrage that you’re hinting at. The fact that it’s not government run doesn’t make this less disturbing. It does change where one might direct their outrage.

I detect a heavy glaze of sarcasm/satire in the comment you're responding to.

Or someone who has drunk enough kool-aid that they actually believe that.

Both are pretty common here, this one seems pretty perfectly balanced between the two.

> Faceless corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime.

The financial optimality of things depends in large part on government laws; changing the laws could re-align incentives.

>but faceless corporations literally cannot act in a way that is not financially optimal without committing a crime

It's not quite that black and white.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that, for a corporation to act in such a way that maximizes financial gain, it must disregard ethics. Perhaps the optimal behavior from a financial perspective is also ethical, but in many cases it will not be ethical.

As for crimes, in many cases, criminal behavior results in a fine that doesn’t make the behavior uneconomical. I’d like to say I don’t understand why this happens :-)

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