“I am one of those arrogant medical professionals who helped to develop treatments for diseases and vaccines and who also happens to have MS.”
Avastin is also a drug that the FDA will not approve for wet macular degeneration—a disease which will eventually cause vision loss and which I happen to have. It can’t cure it, but can stop or slow down the progression of the disease. It’s cost would be $150-$200 per injection vs the FDA “approved” drug Lucentis which is about $2000/inj. Who’s pocket is the money getting into? Oh—one needs to have those injections frequently by the way.
That can make a whopping difference in the cost of any sort of medicine that requires special handling.
BTW, you may have missed it ~ fortunately you can enlarge the type on your computer so you'll be with us for many years ~ "they" are getting closer and closer to both electronic and biological replacements for the macula.
I can appreciate that myself.
Do we have a "blind guys" caucus list? We need it.
The upfront investment for the development of a new drug is 1 BILLION dollars.
If the FDA wants more studies, more patients in the studies and as is often the plan dictated now, life long follow up on the patients status once it is approved.
Now if the drug is not approved, a couple billion down the tubes. Understand that the FDA knows and approves each step and each study of each stage of development and clinical testing of each drug. So after a couple billion is invested, someone says, eh, sorry, no thank you.
So that money necessarily must be recouped with the success and or approval of the next drug in addition to the money invested in development of the new drug.
Understand that the drug company sees only 18 cents on the dollar of each dollar charged at the drug store. The rest goes through the stores, overhead of the store employees, shipping, government and liability insurance for each person along the chain of possession. That is the big sucker.
AND the company has 7 years to make back the investment before it goes generic.
My MS infusion is once a month and is 2200 each treatment. Biologics are especially difficult to develop.