I Told You So - 7 February 2023

Over the years, Dear Reader has been offered a rant regarding the myth from PhRMA that it costs $X billions of dollars to make a new drug. In the first place, most 'new' drugs are just variations on a theme of existing drugs, mostly as a subterfuge (yet, in the open) to extend patents, and ridiculous prices. A recent case being Covid mRNA vaccines, which Moderna and Pfizer intend (last I knew) to charge $130/ shot, while Uncle Bernie asserts has a manufacturing cost of $2.85.

Now comes an admission from a PhRMA executive that it really is all a lie. He doesn't say it quite that way, just tells the truth:

Some of that money goes to failures, some goes to basic research, some goes to clinical trials and some goes to drugs that actually work.
-- Dr. Daniel Skovronsky/Lilly

Somehow, I doubt he'll have his job much longer. Telling truth to Power rarely works out for the Truth Teller.

And, about those mRNA vaccines:

During the summer of 1960, Brenner, Jacob, and Meselson conducted an experiment in Meselson's laboratory at Caltech which was the first to prove the existence of mRNA. That fall, Jacob and Monod coined the name "messenger RNA" and developed the first theoretical framework to explain its function.

IOW, it wasn't those smart, profit seeking, rent seeking, philanthropists in PhRMA that figured it out, it was Ivory Tower Academics. And it was turned into vaccines largely with your Taxpayer dollars doled out by NIH. Damn Socialists!!! Moderna and Pfizer deserve to steal the reward.