[flagged]
Also: companies do not think like a person thinks. Insolation from consequences, diffuse responsibility, and other mechanisms come into play here.
A great example of this in relatively recent history is the treatment of hepatitis C. The treatments pre-circa-2011 were pretty crappy: interferon/ribavirin had poor cure rates and bad side effects. But it was still better than hepatitis destroying your liver, so people dealt with it.
Then, in 2011, as the culmination of years of trials, telaprevir (from Vertex/J&J) [1] and boceprevir (Schering-Plough/Merck) [2] were approved and were DRAMATICALLY BETTER than interferon/ribavirin.
...and then just two years later both of these drugs got nuked by the approval of sofosbuvir (aka Sovaldi, from Pharmasset/Gilead) [3], which has _cure_ rates in excess of 90%. Telaprevir and boceprevir were pulled from the market because there was simply no more market for them once sofosbuvir hit. Scientific competition at its finest.
There is absolutely a dark side to pharmaceutical pricing and licensing, but please don't let the existence of that dark side cloud your vision of the transformative impact that those of us in biotech R&D want to have (and in many cases, have had). I was at Vertex when the early trial data on telaprevir started coming out and it became clear that we might be able to offer patients real hope who did not have it before.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telaprevir [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boceprevir [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofosbuvir
> Let’s say it’s a drug that both decreases leptin resistance and prevents simple carbs from triggering the brain’s reward centers. And suppose it doesn’t require someone to keep taking it for the rest of their life, as long as they don’t fall back into obesity.
> Now, imagine you’re not interested in getting rich—you legitimately want to solve the obesity epidemic.
> But then you realize the weight loss industry is a multi-billion-dollar machine, not to mention the pharmaceutical companies profiting off obesity-related health issues. They’re not just going to let this drug come out without a fight.
> Suppose you don’t even care that you're likely to end up falsely accused of rape by women you've never met, and probably dead soon after, with a “suicide note” conveniently found next to your body. You just want to find the best way to get this drug out there and available to the public.
> Assume, for the moment, that no one but you and a small group of trusted researchers know about this discovery—and you stumbled across it accidentally while researching something else.
> What would be the best approach to make this drug available to the public, knowing that powerful, interested parties would do everything in their power to suppress it?