Think the drug companies have your best interests in mind?

[GasX]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a LOT of what the drug companies do just synthasizing compounds already found in nature?

Most? hardly, but it is common enough. Nevertheless, synthesizing complex compounds is rarely a simple process.

Despite your suggestions that terminally ill cancer patients should just grin and bear it while spending their last days in a morphine induced haze, many doctors, patients and researchers are finding ways to improve pain management. Bulding on Amish's remarks, opiates take effect slowly and wear off quickly. Managing sporadic and/or inconsistent pain is a tricky process in this scenario. Why? because you can't take medicine until the pain returns and then you have to wait for the drug to take effect again. Puts you into a pain/relief cycle that promotes drug addiction. It might be possible to find a way to turn off pain receptors without doping the patient or maybe find less addictive pain agents or ones that take effect more quickly. Striving for this kind of innovation and improvement in health care is what makes the system go. The evil drug companies supply most of the money spent to make sure that patient care is better tomorrow than it is today.

I am sorry that not all conditions are instantly curable by a single pill that you can get for a nickle and the corner store, but if I were you, I'd be thankful that HIV is now a chronic rather than terminal condition, that prostate cancer patients can stay sexual after surgery, that the potential catastrophic effects of a stroke can be avoided by immediate treatment, that Alzheimer's patients can stay lucid longer and remember the grandchildren's names, that people with epilepsy can go through life without having grand mal seizures, that children with asthma can participate in all of the activities that other kids enjoy, that a one a day pill can prevent hypertension from causing a heart attack, that you can quit smoking, that seniors can control their rheumatoid arthritis and retain their independence, that older women do not need to lose inches in height every year from the collapse of their osteoporosis devastated skeleton, that most major childhood diseases of 200 years ago are unheard of today, that anesthesia even exists, that antibiotics can kill nearly any bug you care to expose yourself too... the list is endless...

 

[rahvin]

IMO it becomes robbing and UNETHICAL when those same drug companies go to great lenghths to outlaw other substances that compeat with what THEY make.

Isn't this somewhat simalar to what Microsoft got into so much trouble for? Yet the drug campanies have been doing pretty much the same thing for YEARS.
Not to mention hiding study results that hurt thier profit margins, ETC....

Drug companies don't write laws, drug companies may be able to influence drug policy but the simple fact is that if the majority of americans wished to change those laws they would change. A lot of people bitch about how the system and corporations are out to get them, the simple fact is they are to lazy to get off their asses and make a difference. This country is about the people, the laws on the books can only exist with the support of the people. If you think something should be changed work within the system to get it changed, because all you need to change it is the will of the people. What you will find is that most of america is very happy with laws as they are written, they are in fact quite balanced between differing desires and viewpoints that our diverse culture contains.

A lot of drug companies don't make money, Biotech is in fact one of the most volitle areas of business in this country. I don't blame companies that rarely make money from raking in back research dollars so they can feed the research monster again. Claratin cost 200million to develop and approve, it STILL hasn't made back the R&D on itself alone and the patent will expire before it does (they are going to buy an addtional 3 years of patent time by pushing it over the counter). How many failed claratin's were there before they got the good one? How much was the R&D that was lost?

Viagra was a home run, 70 million to develop and they believe it's already made that much back. Phyzer is going to take all that revenue and push it back into R&D because they are fighting the patent monster. See in the drug world you only generally get a decade of patent protection on a drug, without continued new drugs you will lose your patent portfolio and have to compete with the generic makers who don't have R&D expenses. The companies that develop drugs MUST continue to find new drugs or they are out of business.

 

[badluck]

Think the drug companies have your best interests in mind?

Why would anybody think this???

 

[vi edit]

Does ANY company that works on a profit based business model have your best interests in mind?

 

[amok]

rahvin, bemoaning expenses for a pharmaceutical company is gonna be a waste of time 😉. As a shareholder in a couple of them, with financial statements handy, I can say that at least a few still make billions of dollars per year in profits after research costs. They even operate with a 25% profit margin or more despite spending billions per year in research (and yes, billions in marketing as well 😉).

Another thing to consider is that losing the patent doesn't end revenues from a product. The "brand name" drugs still sell, with only a slightly decreased price tag for years after the patent is lost and generics become available. Many people are willing to dish out the extra money to avoid having to take the "cheap generics" that for some strange reason they don't believe will work as well. The revenues from that product are decreased, but they still provide income for years, and hardly ever fail to pay themselves off in the long run.

As for the development of better continuous release products, I can't really see the point. There are already products on the market that can keep the blood saturation levels high for 6-9 hours (most meds have the graphs in their info packet, take a look at them). The patient is the only one to blame for letting saturation levels fall once they determine how their bodies process the drug and consult their doctors about the treatment regimen. I don't think millions of dollars worth of research should be dumped into making up for patient ineptitude.

As for faster acting meds, I can see the point in that. Some people will process continuous release products faster than others, and could sleep through the saturation period, therefore waking up in pain and needing fast relief. As well as peak periods where additional meds would be needed to supplement the long-lasting ones. However, having been married to a doctor while she was going to med school and during her surgical residency does cause me to have reservations in using fentanyl for the supplemental med 😉. Anyways, I need to run to the store to get something to cook tonight, and have rambled on enough for one day. Later all.

 

[Mister T]

our public school system must be failing....
the following concepts must not have been taught to about 2/3 of the people in this thead:

Capitalism
What is a corporation
Maximization of shareholder wealth
Microeconomics and elasticity of demand
Ethics vs. Law

 

[tcsenter]

It just seems bassakwards that WE should be paying higher prices, as well as supporting the research and development to some extent with our tax dollars.

Well if you're going to call it robbery, you have to consider welfare as a form of 'robbery', as well.

I'm won't defend deceptive, illegal, or unethical practices by any company, show me where this is happening and I'll condemn it. The example you've offered is none of those. Its like saying if Ford's competitors have a better product, then Ford must stop promoting its own product and instead use the money to promote the products of its competitor. What the hell sense does that make?

Futher, we have no idea why this doctor's requests for funding was actually denied in every case, the article PRESUMES it was because of corporate greed merely because innovator drug companies would have no financial interest in off-patent drugs, even though generic drug companies would, when that may have had nothing to do with the actual reasons.

As I said, one possible reason is that the Dr.'s thesis goes against sound medical knowledge. When your pool of funding is not unlimited and the number of requests for funding far exceed the money available, some people are going to be denied and I would hope the first denied are those who have far-fetched or unlikely theories.

 

[rahvin]

rahvin, bemoaning expenses for a pharmaceutical company is gonna be a waste of time . As a shareholder in a couple of them, with financial statements handy, I can say that at least a few still make billions of dollars per year in profits after research costs. They even operate with a 25% profit margin or more despite spending billions per year in research (and yes, billions in marketing as well ).

I'm invested in a few myself, I see you look at quarterly reports. Do you ever bother to look at long term forcasts? The top 2 drug companies patent portfolios expire almost completely within the next 5 years and there are about 50/50 odds they have the ability to restock patents. Eli Lily derived 70% of their revenue from Prozac, consider the size of that revenue % for a minute. Take any company in the world and axe 70% of their revenue and ask them to staff the same research effort. Do I expect sympathy for drug companies, absolutely NOT. This is a capitalistic society, we must accept the good with the bad and the good is that drugs go generic after a time to save everyone money. Do I feel bad that Clartin is an overall money loser? Hah! Not a chance, I don't even care. Drug companies take risks like any company and must shoulder the weight of those risks. But any whiney little @#$@! that think they are entitled to the research of drug companies without bearing the costs of the research should be taken out and left in the remote wilderness.

 

[Vadatajs]

If our best interest is health, then no.
If our best interest is capitalism, then yes.

 

[Zebo]

Think the drug companies have your best interests in mind?

Overall yes, becasue thier viability is in keeping you alive as long as posssible, in the least amount of pain, and sometimes actually giving customer satisfaction by fixing your unhealhyness or illness in order to pay for the drugs which which they spend tons of money to develope. Also, you forget about these companies looosing billions in researching products that never come to fruition or someone else beats them to market with the product. What about all those looses and don't they have the right to make em' up when they finally do hold the patent to a viable product as to continue research on other potential cures/medicine? The pharmacutical industry is the most regualted inductry in this counrty and to say they are screwing the consumer is ignorant.

One does'nt have to take what there pushing right....You know You can let nature take it's course. Ahh we don't want to but we also want the medications for free. Get real.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: amok
Its not the new products that bother me in regards to steep prices on drugs. I have no problems with a company recovering R&D costs and making some money to boot. What annoys me is when they patch together a drug that has more or less $0 development costs and charge new drug premiums. Oxycontin is a good example of this. Oxycodone is extremely cheap, and the delayed-decomposition lattice it uses has been around for years. Yet a prescription for this drug can run as much as $2k depending on the dosage. That $2k includes a very small profit margin for the distributing pharmacies as well. Speaking of pharmacies, that is another source for the steep drug prices as well. A very good friend of mine owns and runs a pharmacy, and I've spoken to him at length regarding this topic. As an example, his cost for a bottle of 500 generic 150mg zantac (ranitidine) is something like $40, yet that bottle sells for around $350 retail. However, his profit margin on oxycontin is less than 10%, as is the case on some other drugs. Since 85% of his business is with insurance companies rather than individuals, he doesn't feel bad about getting the large margins when he can, though that dictates him having to charge the higher prices to those without insurance as well. He also tells me that he feels somewhat redundant as a pharmacist, since the current software used in pharmacies picks up drug interactions he would have missed. He feels that the only true need for pharmacists anymore is in clinical settings where complexing is done. Yet drug stores have to pay the rather exorbitant $80k+/year to have pharmacists on hand. Anyways, I'm rambling now, so think I will stop there.

Oxycontin does not cost 2k per rx. Not near.

Next: Pharmacist do a lot more than run software. If that is all that pharmacist does, then he does indeed not merit his pay.You would not believe how many MD's fck up a prescription and the pharmacist catches it. Also, the pharmacist often recognizes problems in patients and referrs them to MD's where approptiate. BTW the industy average net profit for a pharmacy is 2$. "Retail" is meaningless, since insurance companies pay what they want, which is often LESS than the drug costs the pharmacy, you see this low margin.

Next: Drug companies DO make large profits. That is Merck, Smith-Kline etc. Biotech is really a different enterprise, and biotech, especially startups do have their paoblem.

Next. R&D to develop a new drug is 400-500 million dollars. That is independent of what the drug is for or how many are going to use it. Divide that number by the number of doses sold over the patent period and that is what you must charge per dose to break even. Expect to sell 1000 doses for some rare condition? That means 4 to 5 million per dose. No one is going to pay that. So the other drugs have to be bumped up in price to compensate.

The cost of manufacturing a drug is generally small compared to the r&d costs. And dont forget to cover the lawyers expenses, because someone is going to try to put you out of business. Lots of people.

70 percent of research done by drug companies? Why? Because of "no new taxes" People do not want to pay for something they do not understand, so public funding for basic research is in the toilet. I have seen threads about this on OT. Too much money for this, too much for that. Well you get what you pay for and that is just what we have.

More later.

 

[tcsenter]

Viagra was a home run, 70 million to develop and they believe it's already made that much back.

And Viagra was an accident, IIRC. I believe they were attempting to find a better medication to control hypertension, and discovered it had far better effects on 'other' vascular smooth muscle. As you said, it was a home run, those are few and far between.

No industry goes through deeper or more frequent cycles of boom and bust than the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. So a company rakes in large profits for several years and everyone complains about it, but nobody was commending that drug company when they were operating in the hole for the previous decade.

In case anyone hadn't noticed, new drugs aren't being discovered anymore by accidentally spilling some tree mold into a petrie dish (cost $1.00). I guess you could say that drugs don't grow on trees anymore, penicillin was a freebie. Even those that do literally grow on trees require millions of dollars of research before something useful can be extracted from them.

I have to laugh every time I hear some bullsh-t about drug companies not having an interest in cures. There are few cures to be had, we've solved all the relatively simple problems caused by malnutrition, or poor food storage, and whatnot. Discovering the microbe as a disease producer and understanding its ways of transmission was one of the greatest 'cures' ever discovered, the refridgerator was probably the next greatest medical advancement of all time.

We did not 'cure' polio or smallpox, we vaccinated people to prevent infection. For those who actually contracted these infections, there was no treatment or 'cure' for them. These were all no brainers - gimmees - compared with the complexity of the problems we're facing today.

Anyone who believes there will be a single, or even a dozen, cures for "cancer" cannot possibly have an understanding of biology that is any better than the average 8th grader. Cancer is a generic term for over 100 diseases that share only one thing in common - they are malignant mutations of our own cells. Beyond that bit of insignificant news, they are all quite different.

But let us suppose for a moment that one company develops a vaccine for HIV. They're going to suppress this vaccine because there is more money in 'treatment'...right?

There is only as much money in 'treatment' as there are people who need it (i.e. those who are infected with HIV). That represents a tiny fraction of the population, less than one percent. Yet a vaccine will be available to EVERYONE. At $30 a pop, that would generate more than EIGHT BILLION dollars in revenue in the United States alone. Further, all people being born would need to be vaccinated at some point, at least until HIV has been deemed 'eradicated' from the globe. Any idea how long it would take 10 pharmaceutical companies to make eight billion dollars 'treating' HIV positive people?

Who is to say that the 'cure' is always going to be developed by a company who has an interest in long-term treatment? Not every company has its fingers in the same pie. By hiding a cure, a company who has a long-term interest in treatment risks having those long-term profits stolen from under them by a competing company with no long-term interest in the treating the same disease.

As someone already mentioned, pharmaceutical companies are competitors with mutually exclusive interests. That is a BENEFIT. The pharmaceutical industry is not one big monopolistic corporation, they are competing against each other. What is in Eli-Lilly's profit interest is not in the interest of Pfizer. That is a BENEFIT. Government research cannot hope to match this climate of competing interests and the results it produces.

As unwisely as the pharmaceutical industry spends some of its revenues, you can bet that government research is 10x as inefficient and unproductive.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Meduri's thesis goes against conventional and proven medical wisdom: steroids are known to inhibit or suppress the immune system's ability to fight infection. The amount of money available for clinical trials is not unlimited and there must be a process which prioritizes what gets funded. Are pharmaceutical companies supposed to give priority funding to test a theory which goes against sound medical wisdom to the exclusion of theories that are more plausible?

In an era of rapidly changing technology - conventional medical wisdom - is often an adversary to appropriate medical therapy. Steroid utility depends on form and application. Steroids may be a necessary adjunct to antibiotics for treating meningitis or pneumonia. People with sepsis aren't dying b/c of infection. They are dying b/c their organs are failing. Steroids can preserve function and reduce inflammatory damage.

Drug companies fund trials to make money. They do not fund trials on sound medical theory, per se. The pharmacy is filled with agents that do "magic" that we can theorize about but can't verify or readily explain mode of action.

 

[vi edit]

There is only as much money in 'treatment' as there are people who need it (i.e. those who are infected with HIV). That represents a tiny fraction of the population, less than one percent. Yet a vaccine will be available to EVERYONE. At $30 a pop, that would generate more than EIGHT BILLION dollars in revenue in the United States alone. Further, all people being born would need to be vaccinated at some point, at least until HIV has been deemed 'eradicated' from the globe. Any idea how long it would take 10 pharmaceutical companies to make eight billion dollars 'treating' HIV positive people?

Not to mention the risks associated with some of the "cures". I don't recall specific numbers, but I remember hearing something about the possibility of around 300,000 some odd people dieing due to reactions of an Anthrax vaccine if every citizen of the US were issued it.

Classic case of "is the cure more dangerous than the cause?"

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

As unwisely as the pharmaceutical industry spends some of its revenues, you can bet that government research is 10x as inefficient and unproductive

You could bet but you would be wrong. Industry-sponsored trials will often terminate early if they believe the results will not be to their liking. Which leaves patients, doctors, and society at-large in the lurch. In the absence of NIH/state funding to academic centers, biotech wouldn't exist today. Overall research support by industry is approximately 25% more than what NIH provides but the great discoveries some attribute to capitalist zeal were born of public dollars wisely spent.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Anyone who believes there will be a single, or even a dozen, cures for "cancer" cannot possibly have an understanding of biology that is any better than the average 8th grader. Cancer is a generic term for over 100 diseases that share only one thing in common - they are malignant mutations of our own cells. Beyond that bit of insignificant news, they are all quite different.

Actually, what cancer cells share in their etiology is very significant. From the common mutation recently found in melanoma to old school stuff like the p53 tumor suppressor and angiogenesis factors in between. Mastery of how the human machinery goes awry in cancer is the foundation for intelligent therapeutic design. IF we ever get gene therapy to work, many cancers MAY be eradicated. And drugs to block blood vessel formation (angiogenesis) have shown a lot of promise . . . in rats.

Your body's immune system even makes an attempt at destroying aberrant cells. If we learn how to direct that process or improve it, cancer would become just another curable disease.

If you are a mouse and have cancer we can take good care of you.

Judah Folkman, Nobel laureate

 

[Brutuskend]

I guess some of you are missing my main point.

That the drug companies will go to great lengths to push drugs made in their labs and even greater lengths to keep people from being able to use more natural cures or treatments.

That the drug companies will over look things already available and try and come up with something else, even if its not as effective if there is money in it for them.

And I guess the most important point of all is that the golden rule applies in this country far too much. "Those who have the gold, make the rules"

Like most things in this country, the "people" don't decide what is good for them or what they have access to. Big Business does.
They control the money and by controlling the money they control the government to a large extent.

A case in point. Several years ago the PEOPLE of Oregon passed a law legalizing assisted suicide. And since then they have voted again and passed it AGAIN. Yet it's still not available. It's been tied up in court for YEARS, and will no doubt remain tied up in court for several more years. Call me a conspiracy nut, but I have little doubt that the drug companies are involved in this little farce as well. I'm sure they want to keep all those sick and hopeless people on whatever drug they are pedaling this week for as long as possible.

I thought this was a democracy! Yet the people's say in things seems to become less and less all the time.

And it amazes me that we tout this as being such a GREAT country, and yet we are one of the few in the world without national health care. In this country the rich will live a long and health life for the most part, while the poor will die earlier after spending all they have. And in a LOT of cases their loved one will continue to pay for years and years after they have died.

And now the doctors and drug companies want to make sure they continue to spend by not taking the easy way out and dying with dignity... 🙁

 

[Zebo]

I agree with everything you said except :

That the drug companies will go to great lengths to push drugs made in their labs and even greater lengths to keep people from being able to use more natural cures or treatments.

The drug companies are not forceing anyone to take thier products. Hell if anything the way insurance companies only like to pay for generics the system is actually against paying for the latest and greatest. Also there are hundreds of homopathic-wholestic health books out there which one can buy to remedy themselves. I don't see the drug companies trying to outlaw nutrition programs or these pubications which would certainly be in thier best intest bottom-line wise.

I think the key is to understand to modality of the drugs and decide for yourself if the benefit is worth the costs associated with taking it. Never think that anydrug is perfect and that's usually what Doctors are able to do for you, make these cost-benefit analysis, to save yourself from doing the legwork.

 

[glenn1]

If our best interest is health, then no.
If our best interest is capitalism, then yes.

Like most things in this country, the "people" don't decide what is good for them or what they have access to. Big Business does. They control the money and by controlling the money they control the government to a large extent.

Well then, here's your simple solution. If you think the drug companies don't have your best interests in mind, don't buy their products. Problem solved.

That's how capitalisim works, by supply and demand setting prices, not by people whining about what other people charge for their goods and services, or how much money they make.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: glenn1

If our best interest is health, then no. If our best interest is capitalism, then yes.

Like most things in this country, the "people" don't decide what is good for them or what they have access to. Big Business does. They control the money and by controlling the money they control the government to a large extent.

Well then, here's your simple solution. If you think the drug companies don't have your best interests in mind, don't buy their products. Problem solved. That's how capitalisim works, by supply and demand setting prices, not by people whining about what other people charge for their goods and services, or how much money they make.

I have heard this somewhere before. Oh yeah

"The peasants have no bread"

To which Marie Antoinette said

"They have no bread? Well let them eat cake!"

 

[rahvin]

Like most things in this country, the "people" don't decide what is good for them or what they have access to. Big Business does.
They control the money and by controlling the money they control the government to a large extent.

BULLSH!T. Plain and simple. Any single policy the people of this country want changed will be changed, but the people MUST want it. Not you and 3 of your friends, the vast majority of everyone. It's your lazy fvcking attitude about politics and your belief that you have no effect that are part of the reason that politicians are turning to corporate interests to decide policy.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: rahvin

Like most things in this country, the "people" don't decide what is good for them or what they have access to. Big Business does.
They control the money and by controlling the money they control the government to a large extent.

BULLSH!T. Plain and simple. Any single policy the people of this country want changed will be changed, but the people MUST want it. Not you and 3 of your friends, the vast majority of everyone. It's your lazy fvcking attitude about politics and your belief that you have no effect that are part of the reason that politicians are turning to corporate interests to decide policy.

BULL*&%# and you even admitted it in your last sentence "part of the reason that politicians are turning to corporate interests to decide policy". To say every American doesn?t have the time to look at each bill passed and scrutinize it like the Corporate lobbyists in Washington have is an accurate assessment. Hell the tax code alone is something like 200,000 pages. I'm not at all surprised if one corporate "relief" gets adding in as a concession to big business who got the candidate elected. And we haven?t even started talking about bribes, positions after office, and favors for your home state which no normal citizen can give the politician.
It's all about talking to the people in public and about deals with PACS and Corporate Lobbys in the backroom.

 

[Moonbeam]

"Let them eat cake." LOL

You keep that up Hay, and YOU'RE gonna get told what to eat. 😀

 

[tcsenter]

You could bet but you would be wrong. Industry-sponsored trials will often terminate early if they believe the results will not be to their liking. Which leaves patients, doctors, and society at-large in the lurch. In the absence of NIH/state funding to academic centers, biotech wouldn't exist today. Overall research support by industry is approximately 25% more than what NIH provides but the great discoveries some attribute to capitalist zeal were born of public dollars wisely spent.

lol! This is really laughable. Let us consider the government's contribution to one of the most important medical and public health achievements of the 20th century; the Salk polio vaccine which prompted a Nobel Prize.

Federal, state, county, and city public health departments had critical mass immunization roles, which is among their most important functions in the public health system, but guess who actually funded the lion's share of not only the development of the Salk vaccine, but a few pioneering advancements such as the Ender Method of procuring live virus (also resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize), without which the Salk vaccine would not have been possible, processing of the virus and production of the vaccine (Parke Davis, Eli Lilly, among others), as well as the famous 1954 Francis polio vaccine field trials, which would prove to be an unprecedented public health and epidemiological achievement?

All of this work from top to bottom was funded almost entirely by private means, using private dollars, many of them for-profit. The most notable of which is known today as The March of Dimes (then the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis). This is NOT the exception in US historical public health and infectious disease achievements, rather is it the rule.

In fact, quite a bit of controversy was sparked over the U.S. polio campaign being almost entirely funded by private sources with exceptionally little government involvement. Unlike the US experience, the costs of the Canadian effort to find a polio vaccine were equally shared between public and private sources with the Canadian government having a significantly larger role. The Canadian polio effort was primarily funded by Federal Public Health grants, Canadian life insurance companies, and once again the March of Dimes.

It is quite instructive that Canadian polio vaccine TRIALS were only just getting underway while privately funded U.S. polio vaccine trials, conducted on a scope that dwarfed the Canadian effort, had already been finished for some 12 months.

The controversy arouse after more than 200 U.S. cases of vaccine-related poliomyelitis were directly linked to vaccine made by Cutter Laboratories in California. 200 cases resulting in 10 deaths out of 10 million vaccinations administered was hardly cause for alarm, especially considering that polio was reaching epidemic proportions in certain regions of the United States and Canada. But this nonetheless forced the vaccine made by Cutter Labs off the market, and U.S. Surgeon General Leonard Scheele took the overzealous measure of ordering a moratorium on the vaccination program until a newly created Polio Surveillence Unit determined it was safe to proceed.

The media took the story and ran with it in typical overzealous fashion, the resulting hoopla caused palpable damage to the public's trust in the federal public health system. Of course, the private interests which had such a dominant role were blamed and the Canadian experience was offered as a model because no cases of vaccine-related poliomyelitis were reported there.

Mind you, we're talking 200 some cases out of 10 million vaccinations, we could only hope that all medical therapies and treatments were as safe. The leftist media's penchant for alarmism and reactionary demonization of private interests strikes again...

Now...I don't want to discount the importance of the government's involvement and contribution to these and other landmark achievements, I believe such matters of great public health importance should be conducted under the auspices of some central authority, preferrably an arm of government, but neither do I have any interest in seeing the government's contribution inflated in the false manner you have attempted. Capice?

 

[Zebo]

TCSENTER

I can't see how you can draw the lines so clearly. Most researchers I know teach at a university or work at a research insitute during the fall and spring and during the summer some go to work for private industry including Pharmacutical Companies.. As individuals or teams they work on the same project for several years weather it be on Govt grants or a salery from XYZ co.. Also there is A LOT of cooperation between universities and private industry who sometimes provide major funding for these efforts, and work together with thier colleagues from the private sector. And finally if you've ever been associated with the research enviroment PhD's are not too concerned about secrecy like the bean counters and lawyers, it's all about sharing your ideas and research to expand the knowledge and quickly parse out the falsifiable as to work on something new without wasting resources and manhours on failed methods and thoeries.