What, pray-tell, Ms. Lola, are you doing right now to develop new oncology drugs?
Interesting. There are more folks like myself wandering around here than I thought. Interesting also to see that the pay in Boston doesn’t scale all that well. 
To corroborate what has been said above: Maybe somebody is getting rich off of the research we do, but it sure as hell ain’t me. I get by, and can afford a few extras, but I’m still driving a '93 Honda and live in a condo. I took the course I did for a number of pretty personal reasons, but one of them was, quite simply, I wanted to have a life and court the lady I wound up marrying. If I’d gone the postdoc route, I’d likely have to leave the area I live in now because I’m a scientist and my S.O./wife is a singer and freelance fundraiser when she can get the work; having a family and a home in conditions we’d consider acceptable would be out of the question. You’d figure a couple advanced degrees between us would be worth a bit more, but guess again. I also get options, but they rarely bring me much more than a couple thousand per transaction, after capital gains. Most of the shares that aren’t under water I exercised so I could get out of the rent trap and join the “ownership society”. I kinda missed the tech boom, but it matters little, as any shares I would have gotten wouldn’t have vested in time to beat the tech bust.
I’m not going to plead poverty or anything; I’m comfortable, content, and feel happy to have a rewarding job with an employer that really seems to care about me. The university looks like a bit of a human meat grinder in comparison, sometimes, but I certainly respect those who do the incredibly hard work in academia for paltry reward. It’s not as if industry scientists are all sell-out leeches, stealing all of the academy’s ideas to grow fat off the spoils. We work hard to, and I think we do contribute something while collecting what is, I think, a pretty fair wage.
I can’t complain too much, as I’m about the highest paid postdoc in the country (anyone who knows about postdoc salaries will know that is not a brag!). I made this decision, and I knew what I was getting into. But, it just chafes my ass when people pull this bullshit “drug companies are bad” thing.
I mean anyone asking this question, here’s my retort: What do YOU do for a living? Uh huh. So you do that for free, right? Out of the goodness of your heart, huh?
People say a lot about underpaid teachers (coming from a family of teachers, I heard this a lot), but I’m gonna put scientists up there in the running for most underpaid. I mean 15 years of education after high school qualifies you to ALMOST make 40 k per year.
I’m afraid I don’t have the brains for that, but if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be giving people cancer via pesticides with one hand and making cancer drugs with the other. I have no beef with the hardworking people who make oncology possible. Forgive me if I don’t feel so benevolent towards the Fat Cats who make it necessary and line their pockets in the process.
Who are these “fat cats”? Stockholders? We need them to fund the company. CEOs? These guys are PhD scientists who rise through the ranks.
Hating a big corporation like a drug company is such an easy thing to do. It allows you to feel good about yourself because you are defending the small guy. I just wish people would allow themselves to be willing to embrace the not so popular opinion that drug companies, probably more than any other industry, has a balance sheet in the black in terms of good vs. evil.
As I’ve said, there is not for profit research in this country. At universities. I challenge you to find a drug that has come out of a university in the past ten years. That system is dead with the upcoming generation. Young PhDs, such as myself, have no intention of becoming professors at universities.
As an aside, I have lurked here for at least five years (as my name implies). I’ve never bothered to post because by the time I get to a post someone else has already said what I wanted to say (but better than I would have said it). This is the first time I’ve felt the need to set the record straight.
Tuberculosis and malaria are a huge problem in the developing world. However, places like Africa respresent only 1.3 of the market share for drug companies. More exactly, 80 percent of the world represents only 20 percent of the world market.
The result? Of the 1,400 drugs developed between 1975 and 1999, only 13 were designed to treat or prevent tropical diseases and 3 to treat tuberculosis. In 2000, we had zero drugs being developed for tuberculosis, 8 for erectile dysfunction and 7 for baldness. (source: The Corporation by Joel Bakan, p. 49)
Drug companies go where the profits are.
(source: same as above).
Where did the funds to treat those 13 tropical diseases come from? From the profits from the drugs for erectile dysfunction. You say profit like it’s a bad thing.
This all makes me so sad to be a liberal!
Oh, and I know a number of people working on TB. The lack of drugs for TB is not through lack of trying. The doubling time for TB (or any surrogates to work on in a lab, such as BCG) is remarkably long. Without looking it up, it somewhere on the order of 4 weeks. This makes it VERY difficult to work on.
See, it isn’t necessarily a conspiracy of fat cats.
All right, so I work for the spawn of satan. What the fuck should I do? Quit? Whatever.
Hell no, work for whoever you want, but be educated and intelligent about the fact that drug companies are no different from companies that make aluminum siding or car tires: they’re in it for the money. That’s the priority. Like I said before, when you factor in the human suffering angle, it gets sticky.
But all of this still doesn’t negate the fact that non-profit entities are free to go about developing whatever they wish in terms of AIDS, TB, or malaria drugs, but they haven’t. The non-profit/government sector just isn’t as innovative or competitive in terms of developing novel drugs. Look at the human genome project. The government started it and planned to finish it using the faulty-base pair substitution/electrophoresis techniques that have been around since the 1950’s, and planned some 20 odd-years for the project beginning in 1990. If government alone had done it, we’d still be working on the first complete human genome. Along came Celera Genomics. Rather than using a stupid brute-force assault, they developed a method where computers made probabilistic decions about the genome from data collected by lasers and basically did the entire thing in three years and a fraction of the government cost.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5507/1195
Again, nobody is giving the drug comapnies the exclusive position to work for the benefit of man-kind or prevent the public sector from doing good things, its just that they tend not to. If you’re that worried about malaria, you should support the reintroduction of DDT in limited indoor-spraying. It’s potential effectiveness as an insecticide is unparalleled, and it is effective in levels far below where environmental or human health is harmed by it.
Everybody loves to point out Viagra as drug companies chasing profit over human lives, but Viagra was initally studied as a potential cardiac-drug because it works by raising intercellular NO2 levels and acting as a vaso-dilator (like nitroglycerine). The sustained errections were an unexpected side effect of early clinical trials.
Sure, a lot of drugs are pointed at “vain” reasons, but so what? They aren’t keeping anyone else from investing their own money in more worthwhile drugs, and in fact they tend to subsidize the development of these more important drugs. You can use deceptive statistics like The Corporation if you want, but the fact remains that there are several newly developed broad-spectrum antibiotics that can be used against TB.
Again, kung_fu_lola, what have you donated or done to help out in the fight against these diseases? Surely you’ve given some time to the WHO or offered to volunteer in an AIDS clinic in Africa if you don’t have the “brains” to actually develop drugs, right?
Oh, right, and what’s your example here? You’re using pesticides to fight starvation, which is a Good Thing ™. What drug companies can you show willingly sold a pesticide known to be carcinogenic?
Albeit; you don’t KNOW if the drug entities have something to hide. Staying away from MM will always be good advice. But considering what this guy had to say, I’d think a little more critically before convincing myself they had or had not something to hide.
Like I said, I lurk here because someone always is able to say what I feel, but better.
I completely agree with kung fu lola. The drug companies are no different than the media. Both groups have extremely important jobs to do within a democracy, but neither of them gives a shit about that, just the money. And for you people who are lining up to take paxil because it’s so fucking great, enjoy your heart attack asshole. The main reason America has such horrendous health is because of the ridiculous amount of medicated fucks we have running around. Forget eating right or exercising or reducing stress, I’ll just pop this pill instead.
And Brutus, chinese doctors have been practicing medicine for a hell of a lot longer than we have, but of course they’re the nutjobs, right? I guess over thousands of years treating people they have learned nothing. American arrogance and ignorance have reached an all-time high, or should I say low?
And one other thing about these utopian drug companies, what in the flying fuck have they cured in the last 30 years? I see them treating plenty and curing nothing. You know why that is? Maybe because if they cured anything, their profits would plummet. Endless treatment is far more profitable than curing anything.
And regarding this deal about MM and whether or not the drug companies have anything to hide, of course they do. And not only that, MM does indeed have an agenda, just like every other fucking person on this planet. They’re both trying to make a buck and will walk over dead bodies to get there, just like our president, the whole gov’t, and almost all CEO’s. The whole goddamn world is corrupt and yes America, that includes you.
Floyd, even as I line my pockets with pharmaceuticals’ corrupt dollars, I have to say that I agee with you that we are a medicated nation. I’m not saying that there aren’t millions of instances when medications have cured disease or eliminated suffering, but there is all too often the quest for the magic pill. Sometimes that quest is so that we can forget about personal responsibility, discipline and sacrifice.
And while I agree with you on that count, I’m not sure I’d say that the whole world is as corrupt as you make it out to be. I’d bet my company does things that if exposed would probably make us not look so hot, or that could be twisted to suit someone’s agenda, but in general I’m proud to say I work there. I wouldn’t say that I view my employer as any better or any worse than any other previous employer I’ve had. I certainly don’t think it’s any more benevolent than the other places I’ve worked, because while we do fundraisers for the American Cancer Society and things, most of the money “The Company” donates comes from the pockets of its employees, not the actual corporate coffers. (Of course, we have yet to turn a profitable year, but still…)
[sub]Oh, and you poor research folks need to transfer into other departments - we get paid a bit better. [/sub]
Hey, while we’re at it, I guess perpetual motion hasn’t been invented because of the evil oil companies, and jetpacks haven’t been invented because of those goddamn car companies…
Has it ever occured to you that curing a disease is maybe possibly not a trivial thing? I personally work on a disease which I would LOVE to cure. You know what else? My company would LOVE for me to cure it. We’re only now beginning to understand the molecular basis behind most diseases.
By the way to answer your above question, have you gotten measles or mumps recently? Known anyone who has? Hmm. On behalf of the entire evil scientific researh community, “You’re welcome.”
Actually, that’s exactly why we’re still dependent on foreign oil. Switching to hydrogen isn’t going to make anyone any money in the short term, so no matter how bad gas cars are for the environment, they are preferred due to profits.
I’m sure you would love to cure it, but if your company makes any money on treatment of this specifc disease, I find it hard to believe they are anxious to give up those profits.
Thanks. The only problem is that the measles vaccine was licensed in 1963. In my last post I asked you what we cured in the last 30 years, should I now change that to 40 years?
Truly, you are one of the great humanists of our generation.
As the brother whose gotten late night calls from the ER after a suicide attempt three times too many because our family once had this thing about not being, “weak,” and using antidepressants, I can say that antidepressants can be a very helpful and important tool for providing my sister with the neurological basis to be more functional and successful in life.
Anyway, onto your broader point, yes, Americans are overmedicated. We could all live longer and better lives if we weren’t overweight, smokers, lived stressful lives, and avoided driving our convertibles into oak trees at 80 MPH while drunk. Medications won’t solve all your problems, and won’t take away your personal responsibility for anything. But they do do what they say they do. We know this from carefully controlled, placebo double-blinded clinical trials. Given what American habits are, they do a lot of good.
I don’t buy this claim that all cures are ignored in favor of treatments. If you can successfully develop a cure for anything you’ll stand to make quite a chunk of cash from it, so what’s the financial or competitive disincentive against it? Black and Decker could make a lot more money from you by renting you a toaster rather than selling you one outright, but if they don’t, anyone can come along and sell you a toaster. Again, this conspiracy theory just doesn’t hold up. And if you know how to cure something horrible like TB, by all means, please do so.
Off the top of my head, the menengitis C vaccine in 1999 or so as well as other menengitis vaccines that should soon be available as well as chicken pox vaccine.