Comment by AndrewOMartin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewOMartin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

There's a happy medium between turning drug development into a charity and pushing the profit margins as far as they go.

I'm just asking for recognition that although most people would pay an amount that would bankrupt them for a single dose of a lifesaving drug, doesn't mean that you should routinely charge that much.

Profit margins work when it's consumer goods. For example:

Scenario #1: Sell 10 TVs at $1,000 each. Profit=$10,000.

Scenario #2: Sell 20 TVs at $100 each. Profit=$2,000.

I don't care how many people have TVs, so I'm happy for you to choose scenario #1. However, if instead of TVs, it was a lifesaving drug, Scenario #1 is a huge tragedy, where 10 people die in the process.

Repeat, there must be a happy medium between pure charity and price gouging.

The issue with finding a "happy medium" in one segment of the market is that investment capital will immediately start to flow towards other segments of the market without such constraints.

In your example where TVs are a lifesaving drug, you could argue that we should find a happy medium where TV manufacturers are only making 3-4k in profit. In the short term this would increase the accessibility of TVs, saving lives. In the long term this would cripple future investment in better TVs, reducing lives saved in the future.

Investment is distributed in response to expectation of future returns. If you want more lifesaving drugs you should incentivize their creation, not penalize the field relative to less important pursuits.

Some people will pursue medical research (or invest in it) for its own sake out of an admirable desire to help others. Many more will work for whoever will pay the most, or invest in whatever business has the most potential for profit. You don't have to admire those people, but it's not rational to actively push them away from fields where their work could benefit others.

All I'm asking is for people to consider saving lives as having a non-zero value .

Reply on news.ycombinator.com