Huge breakthrough in cancer therapy that companies won't pursue?

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dreamcrusher

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because they can't patent the molecule?


Yeah at first I thought it was a joke and a bunch of crackpot BS, but when you attract institutions like MIT and Standford, it becomes no laughing matter.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20007777
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19543830
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20080835
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19753307

DCA has already been used in humans before to treat rare metabolic disorders (although it didn't work) and can be tolerated. Why are there no clinical trials for this in the US? Use of DCA in a cancer setting may produce vastly different side effects results.

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pharm companies dont want to pursue or even acknowledge the progress we've made towards cancer. they'll use a lot of money when people are cured of cancer and not spending thousands on their pharmaceuticals every month just to stay alive.
 
pharm companies dont want to pursue or even acknowledge the progress we've made towards cancer. they'll use a lot of money when people are cured of cancer and not spending thousands on their pharmaceuticals every month just to stay alive.

I'm guessing you meant "lose?"

See that makes no sense. Let's say patients pay $10,000 a month to stay alive. Then let's say there's a pharmaceutical company that makes one of the $10k/month drug, and it invents a cancer panacea and charges $100,000 for it. Then it'd attract customers that get drugs from other companies, and still retain a healthy number of customers that take the $10k/month drug.

Or, let's say that this company has a monopoly on all cancer drugs. Let's say a new cancer drug is found to cure cancer completely. The company charges $1 million for it. The millionaires who would have paid $10k/month would definitely just pay for the new drug while everyone else remains on the $10k/month drug. Thus, the company still profits even if it unrealistically has a monopoly on all cancer drugs.

Microeconomics FTW.
 
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The point is DCA can already be had on the cheap. It's sold in bulk from pretty much every major chemical supplier. There isn't much incentive for big pharma to pick it up.
 
The point is DCA can already be had on the cheap. It's sold in bulk from pretty much every major chemical supplier. There isn't much incentive for big pharma to pick it up.

Then I guess the problem is that pharmacies aren't going to these chemical suppliers to get a stock of DCA for patients...
 
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