Biotech Values

[redlyon]

Glad to see The Economist questioning DiMasi's tired old (35 years!) methodology for drug development costs. When Lou Lasagna developed this methodology in 1979 (an NCE's cost was only $54 mil then) it was a legit academic piece of research, but when DiMasi took over he apparently only knew how to run the zerox machine and do inflation indexes. So much has changed in drug research since the 1980's that this periodic "news" from Tufts is now reduced to a piece of thinly disguised BF propaganda. Dimasi counts all the R&D expenditures targeted at development of johnny-come-lately me-too compounds that simply add the n-th compound to crowded (but profitable) markets. He also counts all the R&D devoted to the huge clinical trials that evergreen existing patents so that BP can milk its old discoveries rather than do anything novel. And Dimasi's most acute blindness relates to ignoring the cost shift consequences of the federal tax credits for R&D. If he dared dive into the tax returns of BF, he would find that the American taxpayer is the primary patsy in this charade. But since BP funds DiMasi, don't hold your breath for him to discover the tax code!