[extropy-chat] The Hidden Luddite was Re: peak oil debate

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 7 22:33:26 UTC 2005



--- Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 07:29:58AM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:
> 
> > see it everywhere. I even see the insidious tendrils
> > of econonomic luddism much closer to home in the HIV
> > antiviral pharmaceutical industry. It's the only way I
> > can explain why after so many billions of dollars
> > spent and so much knowledge gained regarding HIV,
> > there is still no cure. Its because the current market
> 
> You can't believe that the fastest evolving virus I've ever heard of,
> which targets the immune system directly, is a tough nut to crack? 

HIV is not the fastest evolving virus, the common cold is, followed by
the flu virus. HIV is surprisingly fragile, as evinced by the fact that
it cannot survive outside of blood. The hard part is killing it in the
blood without killing its victim. Stopping it from spreading is easy,
provided you can stick every drug addict and promiscuous person in a
barrel, test them all, and isolate the infected ones. The victims are,
for the most part, comparatively negligent in their own infection.

> > So long as there is so much profit to be made by
> > treating HIV, there is little incentive (at least in
> > wealthy industrial countries) to actually cure it.
> 
> How much of the relevant research is done by corps vs. academics?

The problem is that most people who have it can't afford to be treated
and generally are uninsured. If you were a for-profit you'd invest in
illnesses that afflict a lot of wealthy or fully insured people. The
market for HIV vaccines has not really hit that point yet, which is why
per unit costs for most HIV treatments run in the thousands to tens of
thousands of dollars per dose. Economies of scale for mass production
are not feasible.

You may justly complain that a lot of infected people live in countries
with socialized medicine. You are right. The problem is that such
countries socialized medical systems fix drug pricing and refuse to let
drug companies amortize the cost of R&D&T, which dumps all those costs
on the American patients and their insurance companies, which are wise
to the game now, and since HIV patients wind up on medicaid or medicare
pretty rapidly, the US Gov't is wise to it too...

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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