• CarrotBottom@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      It’ll be reasonably expensive, but sequencing and gene alteration is way cheaper than in needs to be.

      If this can actually cure cancers, it may even be worth it.

      The thing is, surely there’s antibody against cancer antigens anyway, in ordinary cancer. A cancer cell expresses epitopes not on healthy cells.

      Why is this better?

      • qarbone@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        but sequencing and gene alteration is way cheaper than in[sic] needs to be.

        …what? this sounds like you’re advocating for price increases.

        • CarrotBottom@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          Oops, new to Lemmy. But not new to typing, so no excuse.

          I meant than “it used to be”.

          I blame autocorrect.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        11 months ago

        It’s not better, ideally the body finds and eliminates cancer cells all by itself. Just like it does with viruses or infection. It happens all the time, most of the time you’d never know it happened

        What this does is hardcore the “solution” into your immune cells. It tells them exactly what antibody to build, and spams that knowledge, so your immune cells are loaded up and ready to use that antibody

        • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yeah like we have cancerous cells in our bodies all the time, it’s when our immune system isn’t dealing with them that it becomes a growth or tumor.

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            11 months ago

            Exactly. And ideally not just cells growing out of control, cancerous or not. Senescent cells that no longer perform their function too - they all have bio markers that are missed.

            If we could buff up elimination of cells no longer fulfilling their function, and introduce various revitalized stem cells? That’s how you live to 200 baby. That’s rejuvenation- it doesn’t fix plaque in your arteries or structural defects, but I’m convinced it would buy you a lot of time, alongside treating the symptoms

            And that gives you plenty of time for us to figure out the biomorphic field and gets you to eternal youth and body mods… That vein of science works on simple life, but mammals are complicated. It didn’t take much to figure out amphibian xenobots, but we’ll probably reach AI superintelligence before we figure out how to flesh sculpt with human tissue… We’re a lot more delicate

            I get this sounds insane to most people, but there’s legit science behind my beliefs, and I can look up specific evidence on request… Just be specific with what you want further reading on, it’s a complex topic

      • arc@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I think “reasonable” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Whatever price they charge it will be to maximize to Moderna’s profits - i.e. they’ll price it slightly lower than what insurers / national health systems would be stung for what 44% of melanoma patients needing a second round of expensive chemo would cost them but not so high that no one will cover the treatment. So I guess the price is “reasonable”, in that it’ll be cheaper than the alternative but it’s not like Moderna will be charitable or fair about it.

        It’s still an amazing breakthrough though.

        • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yeah you see this with a lot of monoclonal antibody treatments that private companies develop. They price them insanely high to recoup the insane research costs, a lot of them have reimbursement programs for patents who couldn’t afford to take the drug, or who’s insurance can’t cover all of the drug, because they want a patient base as it adds value for their product. What happens in sane countries is you have healthcare boards negotiating prices with drug manufacturers to bring the cost down, and insurance or public plans covering what the most long-term cost effective and beneficial treatments are. Drug companies want to recoup their costs sunk in to research, and they want a patient base that can affirm the validity of the product.

          Where I have a major problem is when private companies benefit from publicly funded research, or for private drug manufacturers who are merely producing single-molecule or bio-similar compounds for generic labels. IMO generic drug production should be publicly owned, as should products developed using public research grants. I would also do away with private insurance and tax schemes and use market simulation models to determine costs and efficiencies within a publicly owned framework. Small private specialty clinics I would maintain as well as research grants to private research but bringing the drug to market would be socialized and the private research institution reimbursed through that. Any essential, standardized treatments, would effectively be delivered in a fully socialized way, with smaller specialty areas being more economically “free” but in service to the broader socialized model.

    • Welt@lazysoci.al
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      11 months ago

      You pay tax. Tax is for roads, schools, and hospitals. Why don’t you get healed when you’re sick? Because you’re a sucker, bro.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I wonder if, even at this early stage of the therapy’s development, this would actually be more affordable than the alternative.

      Melanoma patients are highly likely to have the cancer come back and or metastasize. Repeat treatments and hospitalizations are not cheap.

      • Overzeetop@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Which is why the Moderna vaccine will be priced at just 95% of the cost of the repeat treatments and hospitalization plus the value of the time saved and pain and suffering avoidance by the patient. Say, an extra half a million. I mean, what price would you put on avoiding seeing your parent or child subjected to round after round of chemotherapy?

        • xenspidey@lemmy.zip
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          11 months ago

          Depends on how much time was spent on R&D. You have to recover those costs. I know everyone wants everything for free but it takes a fuck ton of man hours and tons of investments to get to this point. You can’t just give it away unfortunately.

          • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Did they pay for their own R&D? Usually that get socialized and then the profits are privatized, it’s the American Way.

            • Cannonhead2@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              I like to shit on big pharma as much as the next guy, but in this case, yes they do. Developing new drugs is a ludicrously risky and expensive venture, typically costing billions of dollars. Sometimes it may be subsidized somewhat, sure, but the vast majority of it is coming out of pocket for these companies.

          • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            You actually can. The simplest way is to literally just give the research away and charge a fair price for the medicine. That’s allowed.

            The slightly more capitalist way would be to sell the rights to the government to recoup costs.

            The slightly less capitalist way is for the government to notify you that you don’t own it anymore because of the public good.

            This is also ignoring exactly how much the public already funds the basic research that goes into pharmaceuticals, which is quite a bit more than you might expect, so the argument of what’s even “fair” is less clearly in favor of the company than you might expect.

            • jj4211@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              There’s a tricky balance.

              For every endeavor that could recoup its costs in a fairly reasonable way, there are several other attempts that end in failure.

              If you know that best case your project can be modestly better than break even, but it will most likely completely fail, would you invest in it?

              I could respect an argument for outright socializing pharmaceutical efforts and rolling the needs into taxes and cutting out the capitalist angle entirely, but so long as you rely on capitalist funding model in any significant amount, then you have to allow for some incentive. When the research is pretty much fully funded by public funds, that funding should come with strings attached, but here it seems the lead up was largely in capitalist territory.