this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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There is some level of R&D they do to productize it, manufacturability and scaling. And running drug safety trials cannot be cheap, especially the liability insurance.
That all said, I think it's criminal that the university labs pay so little. PhD students barely make over $40k, set by the NIH. Not adjusted for CoL either.
I think I have more of an issue with the for-profit nature of pharma companies. Shareholders shouldn't be involved in medicine.
I hate corporations i hate corporations i hate corporations I hate corporations i hate corporations i hate corporations I hate corporations i hate corporations i hate corporations I hate corporations i hate corporations i hate corporations I hate corporations i hate corporations i hate corporations I hate corporations i hate corporations i hate corporations
The woman who got the nobel prize for the mRNA research that led to the Pfizer vaccine did a lot of it while employed at Pennsylvania University before they fired her because they didn't see the research leading to making them money. Then she moved on to Biontech where she continued the research.
I'm not sure how much was done at the university but it was probably not insignificant and then biontech got lucky and snapped it up for basically free.
I'm always curious about the actual numbers. Here's their R&D budget by year:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267810/expenditure-on-research-and-development-at-pfizer-since-2006/
And their overall revenue:
https://www.pfizer.com/sites/default/files/investors/financial_reports/annual_reports/2022/performance/
In 2020, their revenue was about $40B on $8.5B in R&D cost. They had a huge revenue increase the last few years, with 2022 being $100B, but R&D only increased to about $11B.
So they do have R&D, but it's not that big compared to the money they're bringing in. Their net income has increased substantially, as well.
In addition to that, I've heard that a large portion of that R&D spending is on iterating drugs they already own so that when the patent runs out they can patent a new version and lobby the old one to be made obsolete so generics can't be made.
Who wants unpaid internships!
AFAIK some US agency did R&D for COVID, they just ~~bribed~~ sponsored Right People