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October 19, 2005
Rendering Health Punditry Obsolete
If things keep going down this road, all my raging against pharmaceutical patents and monopolistic practices won't make a damn bit of difference soon, as all the drugs will be made on South Korea anyway.
October 19, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
Just as well. All that "science" only leads to the teaching of evolution, and that leads directly to moral decay, buttsex and nipple-piercing.
Posted by: res publica | Oct 19, 2005 5:00:17 PM
The stem cell argument has certain made for some strange bedfellows.
Friendly observation, though, that the Bush administration policy on this subject (which I am not a support of) is fundamentally harmless. It is really all about the professional flexibility of a few American professors who want to do their research without sullying themselves with private capital or having to move to England. As for the pharmaceutical industry, they don't actually invent anything. Their function is to absorb the massive financial risk in new drug development, which is much more about formulation, doseage, pharmacokinetics and clinical trials than it is about basic science. They will perform that function whether the molecule comes from Korea or Cambridge (MA).
Posted by: TigerHawk | Oct 19, 2005 6:37:26 PM
Where's my "Ezra TAPPED post discussion thread?"
Posted by: The American Prospect | Oct 19, 2005 6:54:14 PM
An issue raised by this post that hasn't been visible, to my knowledge, yet:
Markets work in mostly understandable ways. If a US drug company executive assumes that the only major market to worry about is the US (and fighting off copy-cat versions in developing countries), and thereby sets drug prices for the US market as the primary focus, dangerous results can ensue.
The high US drug price (including the high price of US basic research and testing) sets up an umbrella that allows other countries to prosper if they do their own research, testing and regulatory approvals. They can make plenty of money on a world market (initially) by setting their prices below US equivalents, but still very profitable. Later they can take on the US market with proven products at lower prices.
In effect the lack of a thoroughgoing world monopoly means other market actors based outside the US can innovate and prosper. This is what many countries do with products in other sectors. Introduce the new products outside the US, work out the bugs, refine the manufacturing for low cost, and then out-compete the US products in US markets. That is spelled Toyota, Honda, Sony, et. al.
The US drug companies try to buy up their competitors to become world providers, but then they run into the US drug pricing difficulties they created themselves.
Is there any doubt that India, China, Japan, Korea, etc. can do the basics of creating new drugs? Do we have a monopoly on science knowledge? Not today, and less so in the future. Merck, Pfiser, etc. are dinosaurs in the making, and the end of the Jurasic in drug marketing will have them end up as sparrows and humming birds before this is over.
US management is so completely driven by short-range profit goals (quarter-by-quarter) to meet the expectations of Wall Street analysts that they overlook the long-term implications of world-wide changes in technology, markets, and business entrepreneurship in rapidly growing economies outside the US. They deserve their fate.
Posted by: JimPortandOR | Oct 19, 2005 7:48:49 PM
