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/sci/ - Science & Math

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[ERROR] No.3767663 [Reply] [Original]

Do you believe that the pharmaceutical industry is hiding a cure for cancer or other debilitating diseases?

I know, it sounds very "tinfoil hat", but they do making billions upon billions of dollars a year making medication for merely maintaining an illness, and if there was a cure for cancer, their profit lines would dry out.

What say you, /sci/?

>> No.3767678

Short answer: no
Long answer: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/218-Spore
(skip to 44 seconds)

>> No.3767681

A cancer curing drug would corner the cancer market and make the company who discovered it billions of dollars.

What do you think?

>> No.3767685

A pharmaceutical company could make much more money by monopolizing the cure for cancer.

>> No.3767688

I, who is not /sci/ say this..maybe. and i dunno about "tinfoil hat" necessarily..just inquisitive. i got me one of them tinfoil hats for my schizophrenia. :D

>> No.3767694

>>3767663 Cure for cancer

Cancer doesn't work like that. The best you can hope for is a treatment that kills the cells from one of the thousands of types of cancers at a significantly higher rate than healthy cells. Cancer is the result of genetic mutation when cells divide. You can't stop that from happening.

>> No.3767716

>>3767694
>Cancer is the result of genetic mutation when cells divide uncontrollably.

Isn't that what the re-engineered herpes virus (the one I read about was Jx-549) exploits, allowing it to work on a variety of cancer types? (looking for the decent article among brillions of not-what-I-saw-before articles)

>> No.3767737

>>3767716

Well, this is close enough to what I saw before. Sorry it's a ginormous link.
http://dialog.newsedge.com/portal.asp?site=2007100814443105593225&searchfolderid=pg2007100814522
209759333&block=default&portlet=ep&nzesm=on&display=Amgen+Inc.&action=sitetopics
&mode=realtime&nzenb=left&criteria=[company%3D1389]&searchID=730444&datetime=[t-
minus%3D7]&hdlaction=story&storyid=[storyid=YztgGy-i8cWWri8nM7Zi9QksolseZBCG7nXegxP3ZLDODaTG
_OD6bLdEVKo8fZIj6ANEqKcpqDIFRg02kwyikQ**]&rtcrdata=on&epname=FINSVC&

>> No.3767740

bump for interesting topic

>> No.3767785 [DELETED] 

>>3767694
>>Cancer doesn't work like that. The best you can hope for is a treatment that kills the cells from one of the thousands of types of cancers at a significantly higher rate than healthy cells.

This is true with the cancer treatments currently in use. However, I imagine that companies like the one in >>3767737's article have found a very specific combination of on and off proteins, cytoplasmic states/compositions, genetic activities, signalling pathways, etc. that have a high specificity for these cancers.

>> No.3767787

>>3767694
>>Cancer doesn't work like that. The best you can hope for is a treatment that kills the cells from one of the thousands of types of cancers at a significantly higher rate than healthy cells.

This is true with the cancer treatments currently in use. However, I imagine that companies like the one in >>3767737's article have found a very specific combination of on and off proteins, cytoplasmic states/compositions, genetic activities, signaling pathways, etc. that have a high specificity for these cancers.

>> No.3767796

I think Big Pharma is a bunch of god damn bastards just as bad as the bastards from the Agricultural, Tobacco, Alcohol, or Financial industries.

So they may not be hiding a cure for cancer specifically, but they are gouging and manipulating billions of dollars and the health of the american public for profit.

Ironically Wall Street is the only industry/lobby which isn't directly, negatively affecting the health of americans. But fuck them too.

>> No.3767797

No but I believe they hand out only enough to heal you as slowly as possible except in the case of antibacterials.

>> No.3767809

>>3767787
So, you engineer a virus that already has a high affinity for rapidly dividing cells (in fact, papillomavirus and polyomavirus can CAUSE cells to rapidly divide, thus HPV giving girls ovarian cancer), and you give it the ability to identify cells with these very specific combination of states. It's a twofold bonus, the virus destroys the cancer cells and the body's immune response further decreases blood flow to the area.

>> No.3767818

Why isn't it possible to re-introduce the ability to die to cancer? Since it divides so rapidly, it'd die out quickly if you could make it remember it's supposed to die.

>> No.3767823

As a direct answer to OP's question: I don't know. But it's important that we keep funding independent entrepreneurial research so that when a brilliant but small corporation can come up with good drugs, those drugs get out to market. A small corporation's size will mean that they want to get them out on the market as soon as possible, since they have no current maintenance drugs out there.

>> No.3767827

>>3767823

>As a direct answer to OP's question: I don't know.

lol

>> No.3767838

>>3767818
That's a solution that some researchers are working on. The key problem isn't getting killing the cancer cells; a virus can do that, or you can give them a signal to kill themselves. The problem is targeting a vector to carry your therapy that ONLY targets the cancer cells. A highly effective therapy is meaningless if it has low specificity.

>> No.3767844

>you can give them a signal to kill themselves.

4CHAN IS THE CURE TO CANCER!

>> No.3767856 [DELETED] 

>>3767663
>I know, it sounds very "tinfoil hat", but they do making billions upon billions of dollars a year making medication for merely maintaining an illness

Do you have any idea how god damned slim the margins are for drug companies? Development time plus ten years for FDA approval, and then you have twelve years to make whatever you can off of it to recoup the development cost (average drug development cost: $800 million) before the patent expires and any company can make and sell what you invented without you paying a dime.

>> No.3767863

>>3767663
>I know, it sounds very "tinfoil hat", but they do making billions upon billions of dollars a year making medication for merely maintaining an illness

Do you have any idea how god damned slim the margins are for drug companies? Development time plus ten years for FDA approval, and then you have twelve years to make whatever you can off of it to recoup the development cost (average drug development cost: $800 million) before the patent expires and any company can make and sell what you invented without paying you a dime.

>> No.3767887

>>3767863
>12 year patent

I want to pass a law requiring all patents to last for exactly the same amount of time and then watch what Hollywood does when their movies enter the public domain after only 12 years.

>> No.3767899
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[ERROR]

>implying a cure for cancer wouldn't be the greatest fucking cash cow ever to puke gold bullion into big biopharm's trough

>> No.3767939
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[ERROR]

>implying

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/13gene.html?_r=2

"A few weeks later, the fevers were gone. And so was the leukemia.

There was no trace of it anywhere — no leukemic cells in his blood or bone marrow, no more bulging lymph nodes on his CT scan. His doctors calculated that the treatment had killed off two pounds of cancer cells.

A year later, Mr. Ludwig is still in complete remission. Before, there were days when he could barely get out of bed; now, he plays golf and does yard work."

>> No.3767948

>>3767863
Patents lasted 28 years in the 1700's. They're up to I think lifetime of the creater+95 years now.

>> No.3767956

I'm a pharmacist and I have to say... No no no no. There are no hidden cures for Cancer or AIDS. Pharmaceutical companies don't make nearly enough money off their treatments for them to be hiding it. This is especially true, since in the end, patients will DIE from those diseases. You don't make money off dead patients.

Now High Blood pressure and Cholesterol, those are the cash cows. Patients are diagnosed at 45 years old, and take the meds until their 75. Every day, every month, every year, for 30 years.

>> No.3767961 [DELETED] 

>>3767863

Your message prompted me to look up the financial statements for Pfizer, the largest drug company I know.

In 2007 for example, their costs were 7 billion dollars, and their revenue was about 48 billion dollars.

For every dollar they spent, their return was almost 7 dollars. 700% quite a lot more than the average return for a corporation, which is like .02%

>> No.3767981

>>3767863

Pzifer which is the biggest drug company I know incurred costs of 7 billion, and made revenues of 48 billion.

Thats pretty damn profitable. Although between that number and their actual net income, it gets wittled down to 8 billion. But 8 billion relative to their costs and revenue is still a lot. A lot more than the average of 2% profitability for the average corporation

>> No.3768002

Cures are not as profitable as treatments are.

It's simple math 1 treatment per person < a lifetime of treatments per person.

If you argue otherwise you're denying the very profit motive on which your economics is based.

>> No.3768007

>>3767981

Those numbers were for the year 2007. For 08 09 and 10, the numbers were of similar proportion with an amount of deviation

>> No.3768044

>>3768007
>>3767981

Pfizer's about to lose its patent on Lipitor, which was the best selling, most profitable brand name drug EVER; so they're about to start losing a lot of money.

>> No.3768054

>>3768044

How much do they make off lipitor...

... 8 billion dollars?

>> No.3768058

As an answer to OPs question:
>Do you believe that the pharmaceutical industry is hiding a cure for cancer or other debilitating diseases?
>other debilitating diseases?
I wouldn't doubt it, although hiding probably isn't the right word to use. I don't have any sources off the top of my head but I've read articles on potential cures for very rare but debilitating diseases that never make it to market for purely economic reasons. It's sad but the truth is that if a disease isn't prevalent enough and the treatment needed to cure the condition is expensive enough then Pharmaceutical companies wont be interested because at the end of the day they are there to make a profit. It all boils down to what the cure/treatment is going to cost the company in terms of production and the relative size of the market.

Drugs like cancer or AIDS are not likely to have their treatments hidden... it's a huge market and, especially in cancer's case, is never likely to be eradicated completely. Pharmaceutical companies can make a killing off of treatments for those types of diseases.

>> No.3768061

>>3768054
>>3768044

Nevermind, I just looked it up.

Pfizer makes 2.8 billion off lipitor sales.

>> No.3768065

No, because Steve Jobs is dieing.

>> No.3768117

Poster of >>3768044 and >>3767956 here;

Pfizer's top selling drug in 2010 was Lipitor (~$10 billion). Their top selling anticancer drug is Aromasin, which is waaay down in 26th place as far as Pfizer's revenue goes. It made them about $460 million in 2010.

>> No.3768125

of course they do

MDMA kills cancer specifically some of the harder cancers to kill

We also have the cure for all viruses and its working now in mice given lethal amounts of any virus they have tried so far. HIV as well. Of course, we have to go through the arduous testing phases that take years and years and years before we can even think to test it on a human - screw all the terminally ill AIDS sufferers that would gladly try this drug for free harm or no.

Called 'DRACO' its one of the first gene therapy drugs based off of the CCR5-Delta 32 mutation (ideally there will be lots more to come)


>There is more profit in treating symptoms and using harmful pseudo-cures than there is in curing disease

The list goes on, there are several things we 'could' have used or done to vastly improve the lives of ourselves others - but they just were not profitable enough. An 82 MPG two cylinder car ? You never saw it because when the rights to it were bought, FORD never had any intention of building the thing and I'm willing to bet there just wasn't enough profit for oil and gas companies to have 82mpg cars in existence.

And we are still working in the upper 30-40 MPG's on most advertised cars. The 82mpg car didn't even have a battery or run off electricity or capitalist ambitions or a dinosaur a la flintstones.

>> No.3768135

>>3768058
>companies make a killing off of drugs that save lives

>> No.3768138

Whoops, made a mistake in my previous post. Their top selling cancer drug is Stuten, at about $1billion in 2010

>> No.3768139
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[ERROR]

>>3768125

>MDMA kills cancer

Gave me a hearty chuckle

>> No.3768270

>>3768058
This is actually pretty spot on. There's no big conspiracy over the market, but the effect capitalism has over prioritisation in the pharmaceuticals industry is certainly a real thing.

Why do we still need these threads, anyway?

>> No.3768418

>>3767939
>killed his b cells
>requires regular IVIG to protect against infection

IVIG is a human blood product harvested from tens of thousands of donors. Each injection costs thousands of dollars. Being reliant on IVIG is not a solution, especially if the patient is not at the end of their life.

>> No.3769056

>>3768125
>years and years and years before we can even think to test it on a human - screw all the terminally ill AIDS sufferers that would gladly try this drug for free harm or no.

The problem is that no reporter will care that they volunteered, all they and all profit making media sources will do is say "OVER HALF OF PATIENTS DEAD IN VIRAL DRUG TEST!"

>> No.3769184
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[ERROR]

i agree with the bio engeniring point of view. Human beings are not build to endure without limits, and cancer is at one sight a fair and natural consequence of age limits never reached during our natural selection. A stable medicalized culture permits eating, minimum stress levels and reproduction over the natural boundaries, and our dna is not tested for the long period, also in industrialized and theratogen enviroments we are not completely fitted for. Errors in transcriptions should be solved in a radical way, and i bet they won't be solved by a bunch of vulture capitalists.

>> No.3769207

>>3767663
You do realise that the same compagnies are also spending billions on R&D. They have to make that much money just to pay off their research before the patent expires.