Go figure: Living a long and productive life just might cost you some Pt.II

Researchers have discovered a way to identify drugs that can single-out and attack cancer stem cells and cancer stem cells only. This discovery could represent a new generation of anti-cancer medicines and a new strategy of treatment.

The practical test of this theory has been difficult because cancer stem cells have proven to be elusive targets but this team of researchers from the Broad Institute has devised a way of screening for drugs that attack the cancer cells but leave unharmed ordinary cells.

The team, led by Dr. Piyush Gupta, screened about 16,000 chemicals, including all known chemotherapeutic agents approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The team reported in yesterday's issue of Cell that 32 of the chemicals selectively went after cancer stem cells. These particular chemicals may or may not make good drugs, but the screening system proves for the first time, the researchers say, that it is possible to single out cancer stem cells with drugs that leave ordinary cells alone. Only one of the 32 chemicals is approved as a drug for cancer.

(italics, ours)

This sounds like good news, right? Drugs that only kill the cancerous cells but leaves the healthy ones alone? If proven viable, this would be a game-changer for chemo-therapy and its kill-‘em-all scorched earth policy.

But you know what? It’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of money and even with all that, the very people poring their blood, sweat and tears into this, aren’t sure if it will even work. And that’s just the facts of life in the world of pharmaceuticals.

People wonder why pharmaceuticals cost so much? There’s your answer. It costs $802 million dollars to take a drug from Phase I testing to final FDA approval and much of that cost is eaten up by the sunk costs of failed drugs. And the average time it takes for the FDA testing program? 90.3 months.

From what has been established above, it would appear that the market forces at work in the R&D and 3-phase FDA testing program plus the ongoing research into that drug is a burden the pharmaceutical company can decide to bear on its own. In other words, the pharmaceutical company has skin in the game and is in the best position to determine the return on investment of the particular drug in which they are investing.

So, why in god’s name would you need anything like a “comparative effectiveness board” to determine what the pharmaceutical firm is determining on their own on a constant and real time basis?

Because they have a profit-motive, who better than they to determine the effectiveness of their drug?

Yet again, another concept lost on the proponents of government-managed healthcare.