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Marketing Diseases

KingMerv00

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October was breast cancer awareness month. Philadelphia had some of its sky scrapers tinted with pink light and the ribbons are everyone.

Breast cancer kills 44,000 people a year. This is, of course, a terrible loss but sometimes I wonder why some diseases get so much attention while others get none. For example, according to NPR 2,000,000 people a year die from improperly treated water supplies and the issue gets no media attention.

Doesn't this disproportionate treatment need to be fixed?
 
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KingMerv00 said:
October was breast cancer awareness month. Philadelphia had some of its sky scrapers tinted with pink light and the ribbons are everyone.

Breast cancer kills 44,000 people a year. This is, of course, a terrible loss but sometimes I wonder why some diseases get so much attention while others get none. For example, according to NPR 2,000,000 people a year die from improperly treated water supplies and the issue gets no media attention.

Doesn't this disproportionate treatment need to be fixed?
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It seems you may be comparing breast cancer deaths in the US alone w/ "improperly treated water supply deaths" for the whole world. And very few in the US die from such diseases, especially compared to breast cancer. So within the US and other countries not in the 3rd world, breast cancer is a much bigger threat than dying of diarhea.
 
WildCat said:
It seems you may be comparing breast cancer deaths in the US alone w/ "improperly treated water supply deaths" for the whole world. And very few in the US die from such diseases, especially compared to breast cancer. So within the US and other countries not in the 3rd world, breast cancer is a much bigger threat than dying of diarhea.
Click to expand...

Well, there are rich country diseases, and then there are poor country diseases...
 
Orwell said:
Well, there are rich country diseases, and then there are poor country diseases...
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Poor country disease, malaria, deaths 700,000-2.7 million

Rich country disease, Rachel Carson inspired fanaticism.
 
Drug companies create drugs that will make them money. That is how it should be. If some organization or government wants to spend a lot of money on drugs that will not make money, it is a noble idea and I support it. It is something that the NIH and universities do all the time.

But to expect a drug company to spend hundred of millions of dollars with little in return is a foolish and, IMO greedy,expectation.

CBL
 
CBL4 said:
Drug companies create drugs that will make them money. That is how it should be. If some organization or government wants to spend a lot of money on drugs that will not make money, it is a noble idea and I support it. It is something that the NIH and universities do all the time.

But to expect a drug company to spend hundred of millions of dollars with little in return is a foolish and, IMO greedy,expectation.

CBL
Click to expand...

I can understand your point of view, up to the 'greedy' part.
 
Originally Posted by a_unique_person
I can understand your point of view, up to the 'greedy' part.
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WHen you would like something that costs money, there are four basic things you can do:
1) Help pay for it yourself - admirable in the case.
2) Do nothing - reasonable
3) Advocate that the government pay for it in which case you pay your share - my view in this case.
4) Try to get someone else to pay for it - Being "generous" with other people money is, IMO, greedy. You get what you want at no cost to yourself.

CBL
 
Beerina said:
...such as totalitarianism or communism.
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Actually, those are diseases that rich countries have greatly helped propagate. For isnatnce, the US did its share in propagating totalitarianism to most of South America and large chunks of Asia. ;)
 
CBL4 said:
Drug companies create drugs that will make them money. That is how it should be. If some organization or government wants to spend a lot of money on drugs that will not make money, it is a noble idea and I support it. It is something that the NIH and universities do all the time.

But to expect a drug company to spend hundred of millions of dollars with little in return is a foolish and, IMO greedy,expectation.

CBL
Click to expand...

Remember how pharmaceutical companies were suing over the production of generic anti-aids drugs? Fortunately, the international outcry over that made them back-off.
I don't expect drug companies to do give their drugs away at all. But see, I don't much care about drug companies margins of profit when millions of lives are at stake.
 
Orwell said:
Remember how pharmaceutical companies were suing over the production of generic anti-aids drugs? Fortunately, the international outcry over that made them back-off.
I don't expect drug companies to do give their drugs away at all. But see, I don't much care about drug companies margins of profit when millions of lives are at stake.
Click to expand...

If you want another generation of such drugs then you are going to have to care.
 
KingMerv00 said:
October was breast cancer awareness month. Philadelphia had some of its sky scrapers tinted with pink light and the ribbons are everyone.

Breast cancer kills 44,000 people a year. This is, of course, a terrible loss but sometimes I wonder why some diseases get so much attention while others get none. For example, according to NPR 2,000,000 people a year die from improperly treated water supplies and the issue gets no media attention.

Doesn't this disproportionate treatment need to be fixed?
Click to expand...

It will be fixed just as soon as improperly treated water becomes an atractive female body part.
 
geni said:
If you want another generation of such drugs then you are going to have to care.
Click to expand...

A lot of the new drugs they develop (75%, if I recall correctly) are "me-too" drugs i.e. copies of drugs that already exist. This is why they spend so much money on marketing. Also, according to one of my links, at least 1/3 of these new drugs were were discovered by universities or small biotech companies were discovered by universities or small biotech companies.
 
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Orwell said:
A lot of the new drugs they develop (75%, if I recall correctly) are "me-too" drugs i.e. copies of drugs that already exist. This is why they spend so much money on marketing. Also, according to one of my links, at least 1/3 of these new drugs were were discovered by universities or small biotech companies were discovered by universities or small biotech companies.
Click to expand...

Source? Remember small companies have to be even more concerned about interlectial property rights. From what I know of AIDs mutation patterns I suspect it would take more than swaping a few atoms to deal with them.
 
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