80k dollars almost certainly cures hepatitis C

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofosbuvir

by tbarbugli • 12 years ago

27 32 12 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

tbarbugli3• 12 years ago

should we be happy about the invention or mad because of another example of corporation grief?

kseistrup4• 12 years ago

I'm sure people infected with Hepatitis C are happy about this.

eximius• 12 years ago

I'm sure people with poor health insurance with Hepatitis C are a little upset. I doubt they could get an insurance company to pay for the better drug.

tbarbugli3• 12 years ago

You mean infected people with 80k dollars to pay for the treatment :)

glenra• 12 years ago

should we be happy about the invention or mad because of another example of corporation grief?

Happy, no question. Medicine this effective doesn't come along often and bodes very well in two ways:

(1) a treatment that works but is expensive today will continue to work but be vastly cheaper within a decade.

(2) the fact that a real cure exists for this disease suggests we may knock out cures for other "incurable" diseases in the future.

ds9• 12 years ago

Reading 'corporation grief' as 'corporate greed' -

To play devil's advocate here for a moment, the drug development and approval processes are crazy expensive, and the pharmacos basically charge what the market will bear for each product, and spread the revenue to all costs - not necessarily allocated by individual drugs. IOW, drug A costs a little and sells for a lot, drug B the reverse, but the total revenue covers the cost and some profit.

At least that's the argument the pharmacos make in public. If this situation is not as it should be, someone should articulate what's wrong and how to fix it. E.g. patients can't afford something they're dying without, but if the vendors are forced to discount for some drugs or some buyers, how is the whole business to be financed?

I can think of arguments for and against various possible reforms, but won't bore you here. We do need something more specific tho.

DiabloD3• 12 years ago

I don't get why people are turning to a drug, when a Paleo-esque high fat diet may do more than any drug ever would.

Theres a rather popular blog about one dude's struggles with Hep C, and hes been through a Sofosbuvir+GS-5816 trial, but otherwise has been fighting Hep-C with a high fat no grain diet: http://hopefulgeranium.blogspot.com/

Edit: Don't know why people are downvoting me. I'm not even going to hazard a guess on this one. Its a rather scientific blog that frequently links to studies being done on Hep-C, ran by a guy that has Hep-C, and I've been following it for over a year.

tbarbugli3• 12 years ago

you mean a diet can get rid of it for good? because thats what this drug does (well for most of the people at least)

richardwhiuk• 12 years ago

anecdote from a guy with hep c != evidence

contingencies• 12 years ago

Someone I know had Hep C, had the treatment, now it's gone. The treatment wasn't pleasant (lots of extreme migraines, lethargy, etc. over a period of months) but it worked. They now eat and drink very carefully also, but more of a fresh leaves focus (salads, green smoothies) with some but low carbs and definitely not high fat. Doing very well after nearly 10 years. (They were in an initial trial)

gamblor9562• 12 years ago

The drug cures HepC. As in, it provably wipes it out completely.

A diet could possibly wipe out HepC, but there's no research showing that it is possible. At best, the current state of research is that diet could minimize the progression of HepC, which is definitely not "more than any drug ever would."

skittles• 12 years ago

Go read the blog now. He did the drug trial, and it went well.

johnward• 12 years ago

My wife works for a doctor that handles hep c patients. We had a recent rise in drug activity in my area and she sees new patients coming in all the time. I can't really believe how common hep c is. This is good news and gives some hope that maybe it will be affordable one day. Also medicaid covers this treatment from what I understand.

qwerta• 12 years ago

Developing countries will abolish medical patents and will start making generic replacements.

Carioca• 12 years ago

There have been laws in place for that in Brazil for more than a decade:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Brazil#Drug_patents

HillRat• 12 years ago

This has come up on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7531858

Brazil's Article 71 eventually led to TRIPS Article 27 § 2 and § 3(a), which affirm the rights of WTO member nations to exclude medical patents from protection; and Article 31, which allows for what has become known as "compulsory licensing" -- use of a patent without the consent of the patent holder.

It's been a pretty effective club for developing nations to wield against pharmas, as drug companies know that if they don't provide or license their meds at favorable terms the states can just start manufacturing them without consent.

The flip side, of course, is that the pharmas end up wanting to increase the pricing in developed nations, because the healthcare markets (especially in the US) can bear much higher costs. That's why Gilead is charging $900 for an HCV cure in Egypt (which has horrifically high rates of HCV infection), and almost $90K for it in the US.

Now, there's a lot of drug coming online for HCV over the next few years, but right now Gilead has the market to itself and, at current pricing, it's basically a $1 trillion market in the US, EU and Japan. Gilead paid about $11b for Pharmasset (the drug developers) and needs to recoup its investment, so aggressive pricing in the developed world is unsurprising, if distressing.

gordaco• 12 years ago

It shouldn't stop at the developing countries.

This is why I'd like all medical research to be public.

viggity• 12 years ago

No gang of government bureaucrats will produce the same results at a lower cost than lots of people with the profit motive. The US Government spent $3,000,000,000 trying to map the human genome. Celera spent one tenth that much to do the same thing, at a faster pace.

brohoolio• 12 years ago

I know one treatment I was looking at used to cost $20 a dose. Now is $1500 for a dose and treatment costs totals $30,000.

While I understand innovation costs money, some of the pricing models around pharma is ridiculous.

melling• 12 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7529435

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7583655

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7628233

dang• 12 years ago

Thanks. I think we'll bury this item as a dupe.

All: Also, please don't editorialize titles. It's against the site guidelines.

downandout• 12 years ago

Interestingly, according the the manufacturer, they will be offering it in Egypt at 99% off of this price.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/21/us-hepatitis-egypt...

Apparently the price is...whatever they think you, combined with your insurance company, can come up with.

toastedzergling• 12 years ago

It should be noted that this isn't an option if you're aleady late stage and have cirrhosis of the liver. Hep C isn't really curable past the point where they can longer administer to you the interferon it is mixed it, which requires a relatively healthy liver to handle.

80k dollars almost certainly cures hepatitis C

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