Posted by pseudoname on July 28, 2006, at 8:17:56
In reply to Re: NIMH question; prize suggestion, posted by notfred on July 27, 2006, at 22:33:17
> > Maybe we could set up a prize of 10 million bucks for the first team that can effectively remit TRD with a safe, patent-free treatment.
>
> 10 million is a drop in the bucket.Scott's question concerned how to pay *individual* doctors enough to let them remain independent of drug companies, not how to fund research programs.
Doctors who leave institutions for Big Pharma (or even channel their institutional work toward a company's needs) can get paid several times what an independent grant-funded researcher is paid and can share in the profits if they help bring a blockbuster drug to market. That's the problem of independence we're up against and talking about.
But ten million dollars (as an example of what such a prize might be) is NOT a drop in the bucket of disposable income for psychiatrists, even a team of better-paid ones. Such a program could tempt some docs to stick with research that is clinically promising but not otherwise personally financially promising.
> It costs around a .5 to 1 billion dollars to research and develop a new med
(BTW, did you actually read the page you linked to? The point of that draft essay was to call in question the .5-to-1-billion figure you cite. The data given there show that my ten million dollars actually *would be* enough to do a heck of a lot of drug research (but that's not the use I suggested for it). The needed psychiatric research that's currently neglected is not only for "bringing drugs to market" — that narrow view is part of the problem. Research is also needed for better use of existing drugs, many of which are beyond patent and have no attractive profit potential. Your link's author says elsewhere on that site, "…while clinicial trials are expensive, it isn't an astronomical sum." Nevertheless that cost is irrelevant to my prize suggestion.)
Always nice to start the day batting at one by notfred.
poster:pseudoname
thread:671040
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060724/msgs/671364.html