That’s a mind-numbingly obvious point which completely ignores the context, which is Pharma justifying their high prices based on the amount they spend on R&D.
The rest of the world gets drugs 2-3x cheaper than the US. Do you imagine they’re selling at a loss to everywhere else?
It doesn’t cost that much because the company are making a hefty profit, of course. And much more profit off it in the US as per usual, the NHS pays considerably less
The deal struck [in 2021] with Novartis Gene Therapies, secures the drug for NHS patients in England at a substantial confidential discount and paves the way for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to publish draft guidance recommending treatment with Zolgensma.
The terms of the deal mean that some young children that currently fall outside the NICE recommendation criteria will also be eligible to be considered for treatment by a national multidisciplinary clinical team (MDT) made up of the country’s leading experts in the treatment of SMA.
This means as many as 80 babies and young children could potentially benefit from the life-changing gene therapy a year.
But profiteering aside, the number in the final paragraph is your answer. Up to 80 kids in the UK per year, so up to ~400 in the US, ~500 for the EU. It’s not a big market but the cost of drug development doesn’t get cheaper just because the number of cases is small, it gets more difficult and more costly. And there’s more than one drug company chasing the market.
None of that is a defence of Pharma. But it is inevitable under capitalism. Eat the rich etc etc.
Good grief. You don’t need to wave your hands so wildly, this is really fucking simple maths. Expenditure which is 21% of the total cannot possibly be the reason why USians pay 2-3 times more than everywhere else for drugs.
London’s police force has been forced to issue two apologies after officers threatened to arrest an “openly Jewish” man if he refused to leave the area around a pro-Palestinian march because his presence risked provoking the demonstrators....
It doesn’t matter? This incident was doubly antisemitic, preventing someone from protesting because they are Jewish, and assuming that pro-Palestinian protesters would attack them simply because they were Jewish (ie equating Jewishness with support for Israel and criticism of Israel with antisemitism).
Yes, he’s a provocateur. So what? If the copper had said it was because they wanted to keep the two groups of protesters apart (as they routinely do, or are supposed to do), that would be fine. But he decided to be racist about it instead.
They’ve been working on this for years, an opportunity to schism gracefully was offered in advance. In the UK, they’ve allowed individual congregations to decide what can happen in their church building(s), and individual clergy to opt out of officiating.
None of what follows is new. I know this stuff happens all the time. And yet somehow this insignificant thing shocked me and it’s been gnawing at me for the past few days. And today was the icing on the shit cake....
But, FWIW, offloading cheap tat onto charity shops is not going to work well. It costs them money to put it on a shelf and it probably takes up more space than it is worth. Plus, they very likely can’t sell electrical equipment that has had its cord chopped up and repaired, or at least not without spending more on having it tested than they could sell it for anyway.
Next time, find a friend with small feet who would like to take it off your hands.
When the female tennis players head back to Spain’s capital for the Madrid Open this week, they may be forgiven for letting out a collective groan. A quick glance at the tournament’s history shows a litany of gaffes, accusations of inequality and a full-blown sexism row just last year. Not exactly a highlight of the...
I don’t disagree with your overall argument but, if they’re fined 100% of revenue, that’s way less than zero profit (because they’ve still paid to make, distribute, and recall the things).
Fines should, of course, always be more than the profit made. 3x is a good number.
You can learn to swim in water that is shallow enough to stand in. And if being safe in the event of a pychopathic ‘prank’ is the primary concern, focus on learning how to tread water. Everything will seem easier once you know for sure that you can keep your head above water. Most people who are enjoying a pool or the sea are not actually swimming anywhere anyway.
The fact Starmer won’t even think about joining the single market is stupid too.
Joining the single market would simplify border issues but it wouldn’t solve them… We’d have to join the Customs Union and the common VAT area as well to do that. SM-only is not completely pointless but there is a massive political risk attached because it doesn’t solve all the problems its advocates pretend it does.
There are only two ways to make Brexit work. One is to be an EU member in all but name (following all the rules but having a very limited role in making the rules). The other is a united Ireland (with a lot more expenditure on customs and warehousing in Britain).
The first is politically impossible, and also pointless. The second is up to the people of the island of Ireland and requires a British govt which is willing to invest in the real economy, rather than keeping most of us around to create the illusion of a real country instead of a tax haven based on a massive casino.
National Highways says the radar detects 89% of stopped vehicles - but that means one in 10 are not spotted.
At least 79 people have been killed on smart motorways since they were introduced in 2010. In the past five years, seven coroners have called for them to be made safer.
National Highways’ latest figures suggest that if you break down on a smart motorway without a hard shoulder you are three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured than on one with a hard shoulder.
No brainer. But then they quote this prick without directly challenging the contradiction:
The agency’s operational control director Andrew Page-Dove says action was being taken to “close the gap between how drivers feel and what the safety statistics show”.
The ‘gap’ seems to be a result of drivers having a much more accurate perception than the people paid to defend them.
National Highways says reinstating the hard shoulder would increase congestion and that there are well-rehearsed contingency plans to deal with power outages.
Just add more lanes. That’ll work. It’s never worked but obviously it’ll work. Fuckwits.
I don’t think we’d ever get real safety statistics about companies in China.
China cares a great deal about its exports, and the testing by ANCAP / NCAP / NHSTA is the same in those export markets. Their safety record is not something they can hide. BYD alone is outselling Tesla, so there will be a large volume of real world data coming along shortly. The NHSTA is too gutless to make Musk share the data but they won’t be so shy with Chinese brands.
Trying to keep my very picky eater 3yo healthy as we’re (hopefully) expanding his diet. Right now the only foods I can get him to actually eat are McDonald’s, a specific brand of yogurt, banana bread, some crackers and some bars. Refuses any beverage besides water. (He’s likely on the spectrum.)
Advising a parent to torture a child over food is piss poor advice to start with but when the parent has identified possible autism, you realise you know less than nothing and shut the fuck up.
Proponents of AI and other optimists are often ready to acknowledge the numerous problems, threats, dangers, and downright murders enabled by these systems to date. But they also dismiss critique and assuage skepticism with the promise that these casualties are themselves outliers — exceptions, flukes — or, if not, they are...
any kind of bureaucratic or rule-based decision-making
Human-written rules are often flawed, and for similar reasons (the sole human thought process that ‘AI’ is very good at reproducing is system justification). But human-written rules can be written down and they can be interrogated. But Apple landed itself in court because it had no clue how its credit algorithm worked and could not conceive how it could possibly be sexist if the machine didn’t get any gender data to analyse.
I constantly see angry mobs of people decrying “woke”, “critical race theory”, ““grooming””, and whatever other nonsense they made up this week. They march around with guns, constantly appending lib as a prefix to any word they can use to denigrate. They actively plot violence and spew hatred in the open....
@pjwestin has given you a good description of fascist methods. They’re not available to the opponents of fascism because they are not fascists.
Fascism appeals to the worst parts of our nature. It gives permission to those feeling fear, humiliation or shame to lash out in anger and destroy the people that make them feel that way.
You can’t deploy the same tactics to make those people want to be on your side instead. If you try to shame them, they will just hate harder.
You should, of course, expose and ridicule the grifters who lead fascist movements and punching fascists is encouraged. But you need to distinguish between authoritarian leaders and the people they seek to lead.
You should not pander to the billionaire-funded leaderships (take note NYT), but you must not sneer at the people they are trying to lead (take note centrist Dems).
Two newborn twins need a one-dose treatment that would save their lives: Zolgensma, a $2.1M drug. Insurance (also the mother's employer) cut coverage of the drug the day after they were born. (www.wbtv.com)
america is so fucking based man...
London police apologize after threatening to arrest ‘openly Jewish’ man near pro-Palestinian protest (www.nbcnews.com)
London’s police force has been forced to issue two apologies after officers threatened to arrest an “openly Jewish” man if he refused to leave the area around a pro-Palestinian march because his presence risked provoking the demonstrators....
‘A better church is possible:’ Methodists celebrate as the church embraces the LGBTQ | CNN (edition.cnn.com)
Astounding absurdity
None of what follows is new. I know this stuff happens all the time. And yet somehow this insignificant thing shocked me and it’s been gnawing at me for the past few days. And today was the icing on the shit cake....
Land of the dinosaurs: baseline of sexism overshadows tennis in Madrid (www.theguardian.com)
When the female tennis players head back to Spain’s capital for the Madrid Open this week, they may be forgiven for letting out a collective groan. A quick glance at the tournament’s history shows a litany of gaffes, accusations of inequality and a full-blown sexism row just last year. Not exactly a highlight of the...
FTC fines Razer for every cent made selling bogus “N95 grade” RGB masks | Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)
US man has brain damage, mother says, after allegedly being pushed into lake (www.theguardian.com)
Yolanda George, mother of Christopher Gilbert, calls on police to make arrest after incident in Louisiana in April...
Rishi Sunak admits Tories may not win general election | ITV News (www.itv.com)
[BBC News] Claims that smart motorways tech leaves drivers at risk (www.bbc.co.uk)
BYD unveils luxurious Sea Lion 07 mid-size electric SUV interior poised to rival Tesla's Model Y (electrek.co)
[Serious] Do you know of any processed snack foods with some vitamins?
Trying to keep my very picky eater 3yo healthy as we’re (hopefully) expanding his diet. Right now the only foods I can get him to actually eat are McDonald’s, a specific brand of yogurt, banana bread, some crackers and some bars. Refuses any beverage besides water. (He’s likely on the spectrum.)
Hardcore (mander.xyz)
For the jury in Trump's hush money trial, evidence of a criminal conspiracy comes in bits and pieces (abcnews.go.com)
After two weeks of testimony, jurors have seen over 120 exhibits....
On Being an Outlier (www.goethe.de)
Proponents of AI and other optimists are often ready to acknowledge the numerous problems, threats, dangers, and downright murders enabled by these systems to date. But they also dismiss critique and assuage skepticism with the promise that these casualties are themselves outliers — exceptions, flukes — or, if not, they are...
How come liberals dont hate conservatives the way conservatives hate liberals
I constantly see angry mobs of people decrying “woke”, “critical race theory”, ““grooming””, and whatever other nonsense they made up this week. They march around with guns, constantly appending lib as a prefix to any word they can use to denigrate. They actively plot violence and spew hatred in the open....
What did you get told as a child that you realised was a lie as you got older?
Let us remember the last time students occupied Columbia University | Omar Barghouti, Tanaquil Jones, and Barbara Ransby (www.theguardian.com)
Worth reading in full but here’s some snippets:...