"This situation exists in the research and development process of many new drugs, and the biggest cost that pharmaceutical companies need to bear is actually clinical and marketing promotion, and Grenin's most expensive phase 3 clinical trial was approved before it started, even if it needs to be made up in the future, it also helps them save a lot of capital costs."

"So, it may have cost a lot of money to develop this new drug, but Nova definitely didn't bear as much of the cost as they advertised, and the pharmaceutical industry usually justified the price of the drug with the phrase: a drug costs only 5 cents, but why sell it for 500 dollars? Because it was the second one, the cost of the first one was $5 billion, and this sentence also convinced a considerable number of people, but in the case of Grenin's drug, this sentence is untenable, and the cost paid by Nova to develop this drug is definitely not as much as 5 billion. ”

"It's too dark, isn't it?" Shen Long was dumbfounded when he heard this, there are so many doorways in this? If it weren't for Academician Ma Lin telling him, he really wouldn't have been able to understand it, and he still regarded Nova Company as a pure and flawless white lotus.

"Pharmaceutical giants are behemoths with influence comparable to arms giants, and if they were really completely pure, they would have been eaten up and wiped out by capital long ago." Academician Ma Lin shook his head and said, "The black materials of pharmaceutical companies are far more than these. ”

"Tell me about it." Shen Long listened attentively, and quickly picked up the teapot and poured a new cup of tea for Academician Ma Lin.

"Profit-driven new drug research and development has allowed pharmaceutical companies to develop a variety of effective new drugs, but too much focus on profit has also ruthlessly abandoned many patients who cannot afford the cost of treatment." Academician Ma Lin was aroused by Shen Long's interest and continued to say to him, "There is a disease called thalassemia, I don't know if you have heard of it?" ”

Shen Long shook his head again and again, he didn't know anything about it, Professor Ma Lin smiled and began to popularize relevant knowledge for him, "The scientific name of this disease is globin dysgenesis anemia, also known as marine anemia, which is a hereditary disease, which is more common in Southeast Asia and some black groups in Africa, what are the common characteristics of these patients?" ”

"Well, it's all economically backward, and patients don't have much money to spend on this." This time Shen Long understood.

"Yes, that's right, as early as 1982, when scientists were studying hydroxypyridone, they discovered a new iron chelator deferiprone, which is an effective compound for the treatment of thalassemia, but because it cannot obtain too high profits, European and American pharmaceutical companies have no intention of developing this drug at all."

"It wasn't until a few years later that Professor Yang Rui of the Department of Biology of Peking University in China developed this drug, which gave countless thalassemia patients in China a chance to continue to survive."

"Oh, is Professor Yang Rui, who is known as the most handsome professor in the history of Peking University?" This Professor Yang is very famous, and even laymen like Shen Long have heard his name.

"Yes, that's him." Speaking of this, Academician Ma Lin sighed, "It's also fortunate that in China, we still have a group of benevolent scientific research workers, and we also have certain drug research and development capabilities, if you change to Africa, it will be even more pitiful." ”

"There is a disease in Africa called sleeping sickness, which is caused by Trypanosomes brucei gambiense infection, when the disease occurs, it will lose control of its consciousness and fall into a coma, and once it is unconscious, it will never wake up again, there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of patients in Africa; By chance, a pharmaceutical company invented a drug that had a very good effect on sleeping sickness, but when it was put on the market, it was found that only a few local chiefs could afford it, and they could not make any money, so they stopped producing the drug. ”

"Now, even the rich chiefs can't buy their lives with money; But then, by chance, the pharmaceutical company discovered that the important active ingredient in this drug had a unique use in women's beauty, so it resumed production; The lives of millions of Africans are not as valuable as the beauty of European and American women, do you say pathetic? ”

Shen Long and Academician Ma Lin smiled wryly at the same time, this is really thanks to the strength of our country, otherwise those thalassemia patients will be like those African chiefs, who have money and have nowhere to buy.

"The situation has been much better in recent years, the World Health Organization has been working to eliminate sleeping sickness, Bayer will stop supplying 400,000 tablets of special drugs for the treatment of this disease to the World Health Organization every year, and the incidence of sleeping sickness has been reduced from hundreds of thousands per year to tens of thousands per year."

"In addition, those pharmaceutical giants will also abuse patent protection, for their own undeserved excess profits, China invented a cheap method of synthetic vitamin C, the pharmaceutical giant Roche bought the right to use the world except China, but still use the old production methods, the obviously cheaper methods shelved, continue to sell vitamin C at a high price on the grounds of high production costs, the world except China, have to accept their exploitation."

"And dallaspirin, which was sold for only $13 earlier, and then when only one pharmaceutical factory was left with a production license, the managers from Wall Street directly raised the price of the drug to $750, and the production cost remained the same.

"Of course, this went too far, and the manager was later imprisoned for other illegal acts, but the drugs that had tripled or quadrupled were not cared for by the media."

"In recent years, have you noticed that there are fewer and fewer drugs that used to work very well in pharmacies? This is the result of pharmaceutical companies' pursuit of profits. ”

Shen Long originally thought that these were black enough, but who knew that Academician Ma Lin hadn't finished speaking, "Between thoroughly treating a certain disease and taking medicine for a long time to continue life, it is obviously the former that is best for patients, but pharmaceutical companies will definitely choose the latter without hesitation; It costs fifty dollars per patient to make a universal vaccine for a disease, and no one is going to do it; A one-time treatment costs $400, is rarely done, and is blocked by patents held by pharmaceutical companies; A course of 1,000 dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars for a course of treatment, which can only last life but cannot be cured, is the target of popular treatment by pharmaceutical companies. ”

"The benevolence of the doctor, the benevolence of the doctor, I don't know where the benevolence of these people is!" Professor Ma Lin shook his head again and again, and the more he spoke, the more panicked he became.

"So, those pharmaceutical giants are the ones who do evil?" Shen Long felt that there was something wrong with this, but he couldn't figure out what was wrong.

"No, it can't be said that it is not the pharmaceutical companies that are guilty, but the unscrupulous capital behind the pharmaceutical factories."