Monday, September 22, 2014

Diabetes ad Big Pharma

Although Humulin has been on the market for many years for a relatively cheap price, a single month long dose of the insulin variety manufactured by Eli Lilly costs Type 1 diabetics $1,200 today—more than five times the amount in 2007. Why? Because the company can charge that much, Eli Lilly’s insulin marketing director said. Eli Lilly spent zero additional dollars on research and development related to Humulin. The price increase thus represents a bonanza of pure profit at no extra cost to the company.

The marketing men didn’t say, “We realized we could make more money off of these suffering people, so we did,” but instead, after dutifully “stepping up” to provide physicians with information they needed, and realizing that consumer demand could support a rise in cost, the company “felt it … appropriate to allow” the drug to become five times more expensive. How noble that corporate profits take priority over the health and financial well-being of Americans.  Today there are no regulations prohibiting drug companies from raising prices solely because they can.

Te team under Dr. Banting gave the discovery of insulin to the world free as a "cure" for the death sentence that diabetes would be otherwise -  no exogenous insulin no life.

From here

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