this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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You know what this sounds like to me?
Like Moderna is gonna ask $10k a poke.
Edit: ITT: Pharma bros telling me how awesome artificially-inflated medication prices are.
In this case, you have to develop an individual vaccine for every patient based on the DNA from their own cancer. That’s actually a lot of work. $10K a poke is very reasonable given that you could easily spend 10 or 100 times that on conventional treatment.
Okay but forcing someone to pay you $550k (averaging your values) to not die maybe is still incredibly fucking awful, so it's really not hard to be better than that.
I can respect that developing a personalized vaccine might take a lot of work but I'm not a chemist. I don't know how much work it actually takes, nor do I know how many vaccines a person would realistically need to cure their cancer be it stage 1 up to stage 4?
What I do know is that if this vaccine ends up being more effective than the traditional method then it is a wonderful discovery, but if it leads to life-long medical debt and subsequent financial ruin all the same your life is still fucked.. I guess I'd rather be poor and alive, but I'd also rather not be destitute.
I know it sounds awful, but I've had family members die of cancer in the US and Europe, and 10k for a cure wouid have been a bargain in either case.
And hopefully with time the price will come down.
If this truly works, it'll be one of those things that cheaper for society to pay for than letting the disease drag on and fighting it with our old methods.
The $10k isn't really the point. That's just a number thrown out as an example of what we expect a company to do. The real issue is power. Worst case it'll be either you go into essentially permanant debt by attempting the treatment, try traditional treatments with wildly varying success rates, or probably just die. Money isn't even a question really, it's using cancer and the treatment of it as a way to profit at levels far beyond reasonable.
A business should make money. Has to stay open somehow. Make surviving achievable for a good life and still make millions. We were almost universally in shock when that Bowser fellow has his wages garnished by 30% for the rest of his life. Apart from the legal aspect as a reason, how would this be any different?
This is the world we live in. It shouldn't be though. I lost my Mom to cancer and she's one of those people who would have attempted traditional methods due to the overwhelming cost this one promises. I doubt she's the only one.