I've seen recently a reportage about some very rare disease. There's a little boy who has got some kind of serious health problem. He can be cured, but it costs. The medicine costs the equivalence of two cars a year.

And here I ask a quetion about morality. It is obvious that the work of inventors of this medicine shoud be somehow rewarded, but why the prices are so insane?

The new way of treatment is a great contribution to the mankind.
On the other hand, only rich people can use it.

Where's the morality of doctors?

Discuss.

Have you considered that it might just cost that much too cure him of his afflication. These medicines have to be produced and administered. Seeing as you state the cost per year, I'm assuming it takes a long time to administer and control this. All this has to be payed for, I dont think they are looking for a world cruise on the boys expense.

The world belongs to the rich, it is a fact of life.

No, no, no and no.

I just wonder why does it cost too much?
The price of registering new medicine isn't too big. Think about all those cheap painkillers that you take when you have a headache. All of them have to pass the same tests. So, what's the difference between those examples?

And one more thing. The inventor of the cure for AIDS would earn more money in a month than Bill Gates in his whole life.

perhaps because the price of RESEARCHING and DEVELOPING new treatments is astronomical?

sure, they fuck around with people just like every industry... but not every industry needs the keen minds of researchers (which cost a lot in terms of doctorates, labs, etc)

any example?

I don't know that the morality of doctors has anything to do with it. Doctors are bound by the same rules and laws as anyone else. They don't set the prices; they don't call the shots. If anyone is to blame, it's the pharmaceutical companies. Particularly American ones. It's no secret that an American can get cheaper medication by ordering it from Canada. That's not the fault of the doctors. It's also been said that many of our so-called incurable diseases actually DO have cures, but the researching companies get so much revenue from them that they don't bother to release said cures.

Drug costs are set by pharmaceutical companies, not doctors. Some of them are very greedy while others give away large amounts of meciation each year to people who can't afford it.
Sometimes drugs just cost a lot to make and develop, and therefore have a large price tag. Other drugs, like viagra, get marked up just for more profit.

i heard from a poli-sci prof. that it is nothing more than a mark-up, that those who create such medicines are allowed to monopolize it for a number of years....just like clothing labels, one also pays for medicine-labels.....

A lot of times those give-aways you're talking about are only for tax purposes. If you generate the kind of revenue a large pharmaceutical company does.. then you'd want to keep yourself out of an insanely high tax shelter by "charity". I'm not sure if there's any real moral fiber behind it at all.

When you choose clothes, you've got a choice.
If you have a headache, you have got a choice, too.
But if you had some kind of disease, which name is 30 letters long (in latin), you'd be in trouble. Monopoly is unavoidable, then.

oh shit, i should switch majors and find some miracle cure for cancer....

Go ahead, you'll be rich

The basic fact of life is this (and keep in mind that the underlying principle behind this reason is why communist doesn't and never will work); Finding a cure for a disease takes, besides luck, skill and effort. That skill has to be learned, and that effort has to be applied over time. No one would ever do this if they couldn't make money off of it. There'd be no reason for them to. It's easy to say you'd like to cure people with an obscure debilitating disease, but to actually devote years of your life to finding a way to do it is another thing. If that effort isn't rewarded, it won't be repeated. Now, once the people behind a new drug have recouped some of the costs of producing, testing, and licensing that drug, prices will start to go down on it (or they're supposed to), but not until then.

Now, you could have the government pay for it, ala healthcare, but there are potential problems with that as well, although that's still a far better strategy than charging nickels for something it costs millions of dollars and thousands of manhours to produce.

Where's the morality of doctors?

ANd who has said that they have one ? I think not. FOr them it is just a job as many others.

Yes, but you must agree that this proffesion is something more than e.g. delivering mail.

I agree.

Companies are given monopolies on drugs because in order to make a profit they need the exclusive right to sell what they spent millions discovering. (Just as authors own their books and singers their recordings). They aren't charities, they are companies that test a few thousand chemicals, find one with that has some effect and then do the legally mandated 10+ years of clinical trials. Add the cost of being sued when it all goes wrong and the salaries you pay people with medical skills, and of course it isn't cheap. The rarer the disease the more expensive it is -- as there are fewer custormers to offset the research costs.

Pharmmeceutical companies need to be regulated, but not driven out of business... then there will be no moral dilemma because there will be no new cures.

just a side note....uh dark messiah, i thought china's communism was working quite well?....

anyway, as long as money rules the world, we just have to accept that anything "new and amazing" will cost a pretty-penny, more so if the thing in question is something people will desperately need.....and just like economic theories, if the surplus is higher then the demand, the price will eventually drop.....so, those who are sick now should do a big favor for those who will be sick in the future; don't by the "new and amazing" drug.....

Do you really think they perform researches for a medicine for, let's say, 200 people in the world?

These inventions appear only by accident. And the price of medicine is of course not accidential - it's insane and unfair.

You'd be pretty deluded if you thought that. China's improving, mostly because it's _abandoning_ Communism, but it's still far from being strong economically relative to it's size.


Your theory is flawed. If people stop buying a product, it will stop being produced.