Who here thinks drug companies (pharmaceuticals) are altruistic...

[NNadir]

73. Let's see. Should we characterize all of us by Rod Blagojevich and Dan Rostenkowski because...

...they were Democrats?

There are laws against corruption, and laws against price fixing. If we enforce and obey the laws there isn't a problem, is there?

I have very, very, very, very, little use for posters here looking at the Pharmaceutical Industry through Martin Shkreli and some executives engaging in price fixation and saying that this characterized the entire industry.

In general, most posters here don't know shit from shinola about the pharmaceutical industry and I do.

I have tried, without losing too much of my temper, although I'm really, really, really having a hard time patiently to try to explain to you the rigors and difficulties of this industry and the struggles of the people in it, and you keep returning to bad apples and assholes complaining about patent extensions.

Patent life for pharmaceuticals is too short, that is clear.

Basically, the rules for doing so kill people, because while we work to save lives, people in our industry should not be made broke when our companies collapse around us.

I saw a drug that would have saved lives dropped in phase 2 because someone in a preclinical phase made a decimal error in a calculation. Hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on it, but because of this error, correcting it would have taken two to three years off its patent life. To bring the drug to market would have been too expensive; it would have definitely lost money.

Let me ask you something: If your paycheck depended on working for a company - would you strongly advocate for a project, any project, that might drive it under? Are you so filled with altruism that you don't need a paycheck? If so, lucky you.

I'm not even reading half the shit in this thread, because I hear it all the time. In the early 1990's I saw people working day and night, fingers to the bone, no lunch, no dinner, no time with their families to save the lives of people dying of AIDS. At the same time, we had demonstrators telling us we didn't care because the victims were mostly gay.

YOU keep pointing to flaws in our industry. You seem upset that 10% of the pharmaceutical companies are making money and seem to be wondering why they're not all bankrupt. You seem to think that pharmaceutical companies should never make a profit, and if they do, they're corrupt.

Do you feel that way about Apple Computer? How about Telsa cars? Amazon? General Foods? General tire? Sony? Every time you pull out your credit card to buy one of these products are you wondering about price fixing? Corruption?

I hope you never face a painful debilitating disease that requires treatment with a pharmaceutical product. But if you do take a pharmaceutical, it will be because we endured this continuous abuse and questioning of our motives.

I am a life long Democrat. This is because I care about human rights, education, racism, building peace, addressing poverty, eliminating poverty, fighting racism, and issues in the environment: persistent halogenated pollutants, climate change, the depletion of resources in the periodic table.

There are two political parties with the power to change things in this country; one of them is changing things for the worse, the other is working to change things for the better. I'm voting and always have voted for the party to change things for the better, irrespective of what Blagojevich and Dan Rostenkowski have done.

I am not a socialist however. And I sincerely dislike and abhor the people in my party - and they clearly exist - who carry forth endlessly on subjects about which they clearly know nothing at all; the pharmaceutical industry is just one of those things.

If you think the pharmaceutical industry is just oozing with corruption, the next time you're sick, and your doctor prescribes medicine, don't take it.

That will teach us, won't it?

This conversation is concluded on the grounds that you clearly want to focus in negative minutiae and have no interest in real understanding. I don't think I've succeeded in teaching you a damned thing.