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To read @BretStevensNYT in the @nytimes ("there should be no big-pharma haters in pandemics"), you'd think that remdesivir, the promising covid treatment, was the result of Big Pharma's big R&D budgets. You'd be wrong. Remdesivir was publicly funded.
https://www.keionline.org/wp-content/uploads/KEI-Briefing-Note-2020_1GS-5734-Remdesivir.pdf
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https://www.keionline.org/wp-content/uploads/KEI-Briefing-Note-2020_1GS-5734-Remdesivir.pdf
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The U.S. Army, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health/National Institute Allergies and Infectious Diseases subsidized the preclinical and clinical development of remdesivir - helped along by public universities.
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Actual pharma R&D spend goes to things like figuring out how to repatent an old heart med as a boner pill (Viagra), or how to reformulate a public domain opioid and repatent it (Oxycontin).
The risky spending that saves lives? That comes from the government.
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The risky spending that saves lives? That comes from the government.
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Why would the private sector spend money that it could divert to shareholder buybacks and executive salary on high-risk ventures to improve patients' lives, when the can just appropriate publicly funded research, patent it, and charge unlimited sums for access to it?
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It didn't used to be this way. In 1989, the Bush NIH adopted a rule limiting how much pharma companies could charge Americans for products derived from publicly funded research. In 1995, Bill Clinton struck down the rule.
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/12/us/us-gives-up-right-to-control-drug-prices.html
Centrism literally kills.
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https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/12/us/us-gives-up-right-to-control-drug-prices.html
Centrism literally kills.
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What's more, as @davidsirota notes, the Clinton HHS czar who oversaw the change, Donna Shalala, was just appointed to oversee trillions in stimulus funds by Nancy Pelosi.
https://sirota.substack.com/p/will-big-pharma-fleece-us-on-a-covid
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https://sirota.substack.com/p/will-big-pharma-fleece-us-on-a-covid
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If remdesivir turns out to be an effective covid treatment, it will be a huge, publicly subsidized windfall for Gilead, the pharma company that gouged the public on Hepatitis C treatments, tripled the cost of publicly funded HIV meds, dodged tax by offshoring its profits.
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Gilead is also the company that secured "orphan drug" status for remdesivir, giving it 7 years' worth of extra exclusive rights to it (this status is for drugs that treat rare diseases that no one else is addressing).
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It only backed off after public shaming.
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/25/gilead-sciences-coronavirus-drug/
The right has fretted for decades about the "moral hazard" of government handouts, warning that giving poor people enough money to house and feed themselves will tempt them to be lazy and greedy.
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https://theintercept.com/2020/03/25/gilead-sciences-coronavirus-drug/
The right has fretted for decades about the "moral hazard" of government handouts, warning that giving poor people enough money to house and feed themselves will tempt them to be lazy and greedy.
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But the only welfare queens driving Cadillacs and getting fat on government pork are the donor class in exclusive ZIP codes, not people living in Section 8 housing and risking their lives working for Doordash.
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Image:
Ivan Radic (modified)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/26344495@N05/48876962966
CC BY
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
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Ivan Radic (modified)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/26344495@N05/48876962966
CC BY
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
eof/
