Skip to main content

The big problem with big pharma


Yes, Big Pharma is a suitable target for resistance, even Resistance. A lot of people agree about this -- pretty near every adult American not on the payroll of Big Pharma and even many who are on those payrolls would agree with this.

And so we have Robert F. Kennedy Jr ready to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Aside from his family name and connections, this is the one point of appeal about RFK Jr.: not that he once hid a dead bear in Central Park in an elaborate ruse, not that he is a licensed master falconer, not even that there is a dead critter in his head ... but that he is an enemy of Big Pharma.

But we ought to try to be clear at the expense of that unlikely appeal.

For many of us, the big problem that MAKES IT SO is not that Big Pharma invents imaginary ills in order to sell drugs that create real ills. No ... the big problem is that Big Pharma abuses IP law so that it gets to jack up the prices of drugs that are genuinely valuable.

Not that its products are bad but that they are very good -- vital -- is what makes its actions abusive. This is something the HHS head presumptive does NOT understand.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Paul D. Van PeltJanuary 3, 2025 at 7:21 AM

    This is public service announcement for anyone needing help in meeting g high drug costs. I know, from experience. There are places and ways for people to get relief. It behooves parients to talk to doctors and other healthcare workers and get the best guidance possible. I don't know what Mr. Kennedy can or will do. He is, un, quirky. So, do not yet despair friends. Do some homework.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
9 comments
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
17 comments
Read more

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...
4 comments
Read more