Chicago Bulls must improve road success in playoff

[fanof19]

Yeah, your point is obviously dumb. I want a company who cant' make money to cure the world. Congrats. Work with that. Probably a billion dollars a day is spend by pharma companies trying to create treatments for diseases... but yeah, they suck.

no....McDonough sucks.

 

[supraman]

While I am not an insider I have done quite a bit of research on the industry recently for school. We had two people on our project team that worked for Abbott.



I know it is not easy to get things done, but the motivation is simply put, misguided. The motivation is on profits, not cures for all.

Which Abbott? Abbott Laboratories and Diagnostic?

 

[winos5]

Which Abbott? Abbott Laboratories and Diagnostic?

Abbott and Costello.....

 

[Pez68]

Yeah, your point is obviously dumb. I want a company who cant' make money to cure the world. Congrats. Work with that. Probably a billion dollars a day is spend by pharma companies trying to create treatments for diseases... but yeah, they suck.

Any statistics to actually back this up? Because I call bullshit. Maybe the companies spend billions of dollars a YEAR on R&D. A billion dollars a day?

Come on....



I'm sure the Abbott CEO earned every penny of that $24 million dollars he made in 2011. Much like most CEOs and execs, who are pretty much just stealing money and jobs from the people that actually put in the work... You could give me a single year of their salary and I could live comfortably for the rest of my life. But hey, don't let that get in the way of a good soapbox rant about the "poor" pharma companies.



I guess the concept of making "enough" money off of profitable drugs, so they can produce "break-even" drugs that help people, never crossed their mind. Then again, who the **** is going to pay for all those yachts and mansions if these guys aren't making more money in a year than most people see in their lifetime? Poor pharma companies....

 

[phranchk]

Just curious, how many useful drugs are communist countries coming out with? Close to zero. How many are capitlist countries coming out with? Just about all of them. It requires money in large amounts to make new drugs. Companies are also discovering that they can make a sizeable amount of money on small disease populations. They just charge a lot more for the treatment. So when that sepsis drug does come (it eventually will) don't be surprised when a course of therapy costs $10k.

Also, the NIH pumps in 100's of millions every year into research and drug discovery, but it still takes more than that to get a novel compound to market.

 

[MassHavoc]

Well I was being a bit facetious of course, but if everyone can just throw shit at the wall why can't I? In 09 it was reported that over 65 billion was spent on R&D and the cost of bringing a drug to market is 1.3-1.7 billion when factoring in all the failed drugs.



I never said anything about CEO's getting paid to much, I never said anything about them being poor Pharma companies, I was reacting the the fact that the world doesn't run on rainbows and sunshine and you have to actually make money to be successful in this country. And the top companies in the business do a lot of their business by swooping up IP from startups who have already failed and trying to make a go at the compound themselves. And it would seem that Phranchk already beat me to the other points. We essentially are funding the research for not just the US but for the world. and not only that we are paying for everyone else in the world to have cheaper drugs. Other countries have cost controls on all their drugs. They force the companies to be locked into a certain price and a lot of times it can be cheaper than making a profit for the company so they have to sell it at higher rates elsewhere or just pull the product off the market, thus limiting it's reach and effectiveness. Not to mention the shit ton of drugs they give away free in third world countries. And don't forget almost all major companies have low-income assistance program.



It just really bothers me that folks talk about these types of issues like there is no dollar value that you can put on life, like it's the most valuable thing in the world, yet then the first thing that gets railed on about drug companies is the fact that they are pulling in billions of dollars. Well no shit. They are saving lives and spending a shit ton of money to do it. Very High Risk, Very High Reward.

 

[Pez68]

Just curious, how many useful drugs are communist countries coming out with? Close to zero. How many are capitlist countries coming out with? Just about all of them. It requires money in large amounts to make new drugs. Companies are also discovering that they can make a sizeable amount of money on small disease populations. They just charge a lot more for the treatment. So when that sepsis drug does come (it eventually will) don't be surprised when a course of therapy costs $10k.

Also, the NIH pumps in 100's of millions every year into research and drug discovery, but it still takes more than that to get a novel compound to market.

How many communist countries are even left in the world? Even communist countries are capitalist countries to an extent now.... so I hardly see your point. Yes it takes money to make new drugs. No shit. These companies are some of the richest, most powerful in the world, in case you weren't paying attention.



I'm sure everyone is aware of this, as well.

There are special rules for certain rare diseases ("orphan diseases") involving fewer than 200,000 patients in the United States, or larger populations in certain circumstances. [sup][25][/sup] Because medical research and development of drugs to treat such diseases is financially disadvantageous, companies that do so are rewarded with tax reductions, fee waivers, and market exclusivity on that drug for a limited time (seven years), regardless of whether the drug is protected by patents.

 

[Pez68]

Well I was being a bit facetious of course, but if everyone can just throw shit at the wall why can't I? In 09 it was reported that over 65 billion was spent on R&D and the cost of bringing a drug to market is 1.3-1.7 billion when factoring in all the failed drugs.



I never said anything about CEO's getting paid to much, I never said anything about them being poor Pharma companies, I was reacting the the fact that the world doesn't run on rainbows and sunshine and you have to actually make money to be successful in this country. And the top companies in the business do a lot of their business by swooping up IP from startups who have already failed and trying to make a go at the compound themselves. And it would seem that Phranchk already beat me to the other points. We essentially are funding the research for not just the US but for the world. and not only that we are paying for everyone else in the world to have cheaper drugs. Other countries have cost controls on all their drugs. They force the companies to be locked into a certain price and a lot of times it can be cheaper than making a profit for the company so they have to sell it at higher rates elsewhere or just pull the product off the market, thus limiting it's reach and effectiveness. Not to mention the shit ton of drugs they give away free in third world countries. And don't forget almost all major companies have low-income assistance program.



It just really bothers me that folks talk about these types of issues like there is no dollar value that you can put on life, like it's the most valuable thing in the world, yet then the first thing that gets railed on about drug companies is the fact that they are pulling in billions of dollars. Well no shit. They are saving lives and spending a shit ton of money to do it. Very High Risk, Very High Reward.

65 billion spent in one year, by the major pharmaceutical companies. Well, Pfizer made more in profit that year than the entire industry spent on R&D. So, what do you get out of that? What does the cost of bringing a drug to market matter, when, once it hits the market, they make the cost back within a couple months?

 

[MassHavoc]

Yes, as I said before, there are companies now that have grown out of only making niche market drugs. There are a lot more issues involved than just the 200k patient status. Things like production facitilites, marketing, saftey trials, ect all have very different procedures, and it's not something the "rewards" can wipe away.

 

[MassHavoc]

65 billion spent in one year, by the major pharmaceutical companies. Well, Pfizer made more in profit that year than the entire industry spent on R&D. So, what do you get out of that? What does the cost of bringing a drug to market matter, when, once it hits the market, they make the cost back within a couple months?

1. No they didn't.... and I hope you know the difference between revenue and profits... 2. You do realize that's a global company right?

 

[BigPete]

How many communist countries are even left in the world? Even communist countries are capitalist countries to an extent now.... so I hardly see your point. Yes it takes money to make new drugs. No shit. These companies are some of the richest, most powerful in the world, in case you weren't paying attention.



I'm sure everyone is aware of this, as well.

China is a perfect example that proves your point. The buzz is that they are also getting in on the profit bandwagon of big Pharma, because as Phrank pointed out, they now have the money to make more drugs and hence more money.

 

[BigPete]

1. No they didn't.... and I hope you know the difference between revenue and profits... 2. You do realize that's a global company right?

What isn't a 'global company' these days? Are you talking about the nature of its investors? If you are then you are just backing up my point. It is all about satisfying your investors by way or more and more and more profit. It is not about fixing sick people. I'm sorry that it bothers you that I am bothered by that.

 

[MassHavoc]

No... I was talking about the fact that he was spitting out global REVENUE numbers not profit, and trying to correlate them to US R&D spending.





And how is it not about fixing people? If the drug doesn't work it's not getting on the market and they don't make money. PERIOD. Your drugs have to work, which means they have to fix people, what better incentive....

 

[Pez68]

1. No they didn't.... and I hope you know the difference between revenue and profits... 2. You do realize that's a global company right?

Yeah, you're right. I misread that. $67B in revenue. Net income for 2009 was $9B. You realize that your figure for R&D is for the entire world, right? You do also realize that there is a lot of fudging going on with those numbers to make the company look better? A lot of what they consider "R&D" cost has nothing to do with research and development. Some companies consider foregone profit as R&D cost. That is, the money they would have made had they not spent anything on research and development, and just sat on their money... You know, kind of similar to how the Blackhawks are not profitable?



Where is Pfizer based, again? They are a US company that does business globally. What does that matter?



Also, pharmaceutical R&D has gone down in recent years, while company profits continue to go up.



These guys get no slack from me whatsoever. I don't want to hear how "hard" it is for them to put out drugs, when they make billions on them. Even the ones that aren't actually "new drugs" but just a tweaked mixture of current compounds.

 

[roshinaya]

Isn't a lot of the fundamental research in pharmaceuticals done by government funded universities and research institutes and once a compound shows promise the pharma industry swoops in and buys it and further refines it and sell it for profit. For all the dollars the pharmaceutical industry spends on getting a drug ready for the market, how many dollars are used to promote and advertise it? Not to mention lobbying costs. I bet that far exceeds their research costs. It seems that now these companies market different sicknesses where they just happen to have a cure for it for sale. People are on more drugs than ever before, how much of them are superfluous and how much do we actually know about how the different drugs one is on interact with each other?

 

[phranchk]

Here's a good article on the true costs of brining a drug to market.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthew...truly-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs/

 

[BigPete]

And how is it not about fixing people? If the drug doesn't work it's not getting on the market and they don't make money. PERIOD. Your drugs have to work, which means they have to fix people, what better incentive....

I find fault in that statement. Think about all the drugs that are being pushed on doctors buy pharma reps who then push them on to patients as samples so they get hooked and start taking them regularly. Then you find out that said uber popular drug is actually bad for you.



http://www.alternet.org/story/14890...ig_pharma_shoves_down_our_throats?page=entire

15 Dangerous Drugs Big Pharma Shoves Down Our Throats



By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet

Posted on November 19, 2010, Printed on July 19, 2012

http://www.alternet.org/story/148907/15_dangerous_drugs_big_pharma_shoves_down_our_throats





In the pharmaceutical industry’s rush to get drugs to market, safety usually comes last. Long studies to truly assess a drug's risks just delay profits after all -- and if problems do emerge after medication hits the market, settlements are usually less than profits. Remember, Vioxx still made money.



The following drugs are so plagued with safety problems, it is a wonder they’re on the market at all. It's a testament to Big Pharma's greed and our poor regulatory processes that they are.

-- Lipitor and Crestor

Why is Lipitor the bestselling drug in the world? Because every adult with high LDL or fear of high LDL is on it. (And also 2.8 million children, says Consumer Reports.) No one is going to say statins don't prevent heart attack in high-risk patients (though diet and exercise have worked in high-risk groups too). But doctors will say statins are so over-prescribed that more patients get their side effects -- weakness, dizziness, pain and arthritis -- than heart attack prevention. Worse, they think it's old age!

"My older patients literally do without food so that they can buy these medicines that make them sicker, feel bad, and do nothing to improve life," says an ophthalmologist web poster from Tennessee. "There is no scientific basis for treating older folks with $300+/month meds that have serious side-effects and largely unknown multiple drug interactions." What kinds of side effects? All statins can cause muscle breakdown (called rhabdomyolysis) but combining them with antibiotics, protease inhibitors drugs and anti-fungals increases your risks. In fact, Crestor is so highly linked to rhabdomyolysis it is double dissed: Public Citizen calls it a Do Not Use and the FDA's David Graham named it one of the five most dangerous drugs before Congress.

-- Yaz and Yasmin

It sounded too good to be true and it was. Birth control pills that also cleared up acne, treated severe PMS (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder or PMDD) and avoided the water retention of traditional birth control pills.

But soon after Bayer launched Yaz in 2006 as going "beyond birth control," 18-year-olds were coming down with blood clots, gall bladder disease, heart attacks and even strokes. Fifteen-year-old Katie Ketner had her gallbladder removed. Susan Gallenos had a stroke and part of her skull removed. College student Michelle Pfleger, 18, collapsed and died of a pulmonary thromboemboli from taking Yaz, says her mother Joan Cummins.

While TV ads for Yaz in 2008 were so misleading that FDA ordered Bayer to run correction ads, Yaz sales are still brisk. In fact, financial analysts attribute the third quarter slump in the Yaz "franchise" of 28.1 percent to the appearance of a Yaz generic, not to the thousands of women who have been harmed.

Why is Yaz sometimes deadly? It includes a drug that was never before marketed in the U.S. -- drospirenone -- and apparently causes elevated potassium, heart problems, and a change in acid balance of the blood. Who knew? But not only is Bayer still marketing it, women do not receive "test subject" compensation for using it either.

-- Lyrica, Topomax and Lamictal

Why would Americans take an epilepsy seizure drug for pain? The same reason they'll take an antipsychotic for the blues and an antidepressant for knee pain: good consumer marketing. In August FDA ordered a warning for aseptic meningitis, or brain inflammation, on Lamictal -- but it is still the darling of military and civilian doctors for unapproved pain and migraine. Lamictal also has the distinction of looting $51 million from Medicaid last year despite a generic existing.

All seizure drugs increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors according to their mandated labels. An April article in JAMA found seizure drugs linked to 26 suicides, 801[sup] [/sup]attempted suicides, and 41 violent deaths in just five years.

All three drugs can make you lose your memory and your hair, say posters on the drug rating site askapatient.com. Topamax is referred to as "Stupamax" in the military -- though evidently not enough to ask, "Why am I taking this drug again?"

-- Humira, Prolia and TNF Blockers

If you think pharma is producing a lot of expensive, dangerous injectables lately, you're right. Yesterday's blockbuster pills have been supplanted with vaccines and biologics that are more lucrative and safer...from generic competition, that is. The problem is, not only are biologics like Humira and Prolia creepy and dangerous -- they're made from genetically engineered hamster cells and suppress the actual immune system -- the diseases they treat are "sold" to healthy people.

Recently, thousands of college students in Chicago found inserts in their campus newspapers hawking Humira for Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. ("Hate psoriasis? Love clearer skin," says an ad on the Humira Web site featuring a pretty woman.) And earlier this year Prolia was approved by the FDA for postmenopausal osteoporosis with a high risk of fracture. Do healthy people really want to suppress their body's tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and invite tuberculosis, serious, possibly lethal infections, melanoma, lymphoma and "unusual cancers in children and teenagers" as the Humira label warns? Nor is it clear these drugs work. The Humira label warns against developing "new or worsening" psoriasis -- a condition it is supposed to treat.

-- Chantix

How unsafe is the antismoking drug Chantix? After 397 FDA cases of possible psychosis, 227 domestic reports of suicidal acts, thoughts or behaviors and 28 suicides, the government banned pilots and air traffic controllers and interstate truck and bus drivers from taking Chantix in 2008. Four months later, some military pharmacies banned the drug, which reduces both cravings and smoking pleasure. In addition to Chantix' neuropsychiatric effects (immortalized by New Bohemians musician Carter Albrecht, who was shot to death in 2007 in Texas by a neighbor after acting aggressively), Chantix is linked to angioedema, serious skin reactions, visual impairment, accidental injury, dizziness, muscle spasms, seizures and loss of consciousness. In defending an increasingly indefensible drug, Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation said last year, "Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States and we know these products are effective aids in helping people quit." True enough -- but if you smoke cigarettes you can still drive an interstate truck.

-- Ambien

Sleeping pills like Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata and Rozerem only decrease get-to-sleep time by 18 minutes according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

But Ambien has additional cachet compared to its soporific brethren: it is the drug Tiger Woods reportedly used when cavorting with his consorts; and former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy was taking it when he crashed his Ford Mustang while driving to Capitol Hill in the middle of the night to "vote" in 2006.

In fact Ambien's legendary somnambulism side effects -- people walk, drive, make phone calls and even have sex while sleeping -- has increased traffic accidents say law enforcement officials, with some drivers not even recognizing arresting police. Thanks to bad Ambien press, Sanofi-Aventis has had to run ads telling the public to get in bed and stay there if you are going to take Ambien. (Or you'll break out in handcuffs, as the joke goes.) Ambien has also increased the national weight problem as dieters wake up amid mountains of pizza, Krispy Kreme and Häagen-Dazs cartons consumed by their evil twins.

-- Tamoxifen

Is it a coincidence that Tamoxifen maker AstraZenaca founded Breast Cancer Awareness Month and makes carcinogenic agrochemicals that cause breast cancer? Both the original safety studies of Tamoxifen, which causes cancer, birth defects and is a chemical cousin of organochlorine pesticides, and its original marketing were riddled with scientific error. In fact, FDA objected to AstraZeneca's marketing claim of breast cancer prevention and the casting of endometrial cancer as an "uncommon" event 10 years ago.

Yet today pharma-linked doctors still tell women to take Tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer even though an American Journal of Medicine study found the average life expectancy increase is nine days (and Public Citizen says for every case of breast cancer Tamoxifen prevents there is a life-threatening case of blood clots, stroke or endometrial cancer). A Gynecologic and Obstetric Investigation study shows an example of Tamoxifen's downside: 57.2 percent of women on continuous Tamoxifen developed atrophy of the lining of the uterus, 35.7 coexisting hyperphasia and 8.1 percent uterine polyps. We won't even talk about eye and memory problems -- or the Tamoxifen cousin, Evista, that pharma is also pushing which has a "death from stroke" warning on its label.



-- Boniva

Why is the bisphosphonate bone drug Boniva available in a convenient, once-monthly formulation? Could patients balk at the fact that after you take it you have to avoid lying down for at least 60 minutes to "help decrease the risk of problems in the esophagus and stomach," wait at least 60 minutes before eating or drinking anything except water, never take it with mineral water, sparkling water, coffee, tea, milk, juice or other oral medicine, including calcium, antacids, or vitamins, and of course, "do not chew or suck"? Nor should you take Boniva, say the warnings, "if you have difficult or painful swallowing, chest pain or continuing or severe heartburn, have low blood calcium or severe kidney disease or if severe bone, joint and/or muscle pain."

Bone drugs like Boniva, Fosamax and Actonel are a good example of FDA approving once-unapprovable drugs by transferring risk onto the public's shoulders with "we warned you" labels. The warnings are supposed to make people make their own safety decisions. Except that people just think FDA wouldn't have approved it if it weren't safe.

-- Prempro and [font="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"]Premarin[/font]

You'd think Pfizer's hormone drugs Prempro and the related Premarin and Provera would be history in light of their perks: 26 percent increase in breast cancer, 41 percent increase in strokes, 29 percent increase in heart attacks, 22 percent increase in cardiovascular disease, double the rates of blood clots and links to deafness, urinary incontinence, cataracts, gout, joint degeneration, asthma, lupus, scleroderma, dementia, Alzheimer's disease and lung, ovarian, breast, endometrial, gall bladder and melanoma cancers -- pant pant. But you'd be wrong. Even as we speak, Pfizer-linked researchers are testing the cognitive and cardiovascular "benefits" of hormone therapy, in some cases with our tax dollars, at major universities. Even though the cancer rate in the U.S. and Canada fell when women quit hormone therapy in 2002 (as did the U.S. heart attack rate in women), pharma is rolling out HT "Light" for women who suffer from the "ism" of incredibly short memory.

Martha Rosenberg frequently writes about the impact of the pharmaceutical, food and gun industries on public health. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and other outlets.

© 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

[roshinaya]

One thing I always wondered, who comes up with all these brand names?

 

[winos5]

Just curious, how many useful drugs are communist countries coming out with? Close to zero. How many are capitlist countries coming out with? Just about all of them. It requires money in large amounts to make new drugs. Companies are also discovering that they can make a sizeable amount of money on small disease populations. They just charge a lot more for the treatment. So when that sepsis drug does come (it eventually will) don't be surprised when a course of therapy costs $10k.

Also, the NIH pumps in 100's of millions every year into research and drug discovery, but it still takes more than that to get a novel compound to market.

What would you know about it?

 

[phranchk]

I find fault in that statement. Think about all the drugs that are being pushed on doctors buy pharma reps who then push them on to patients as samples so they get hooked and start taking them regularly. Then you find out that said uber popular drug is actually bad for you.



http://www.alternet....ats?page=entire

I must say that for some of those drugs listed there and the reasons given are bs or are greatly blown out of proportion. Topomax and Lamictal are life savers for many, especially patients with epilepsy.

Lipitor and Crestor actually work because of their effects of c-reactive protein on not on it's lipid lowering properties (at least not entirely) and yes rhabdo is a serious possible side effect but it's rarely life threatening.

"In 252,460 patients treated with lipid-lowering agents, 24 cases of hospitalized rhabdomyolysis occurred during treatment."

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/15572716

Also, the rates listed are extremely low compared to the number of people actually taking the medications.

My point is, all drugs have side effects. It's always been about risk/reward ratio. Granted, there certainly are plenty of drugs that are popular solely because of marketing. They are, in many cases, no better than drugs they are replacing on the market. To get a drug to market you have to better than placebo and not better than a competitor drug. Also, some drugs you'll never know some of the side effects until they get to market because the clinical trial size isn't large enough to capture all the real world possibilities for interactions.