Hepatitis C Surpasses AIDS

[Muse]

So instead of developing a vaccine or a cure for Hep C, scientist work on stuff like chicken pox.

Why dont we have a cure for viral infections? It seems that some parts of modern medicine are stuck in the dark ages.

Developing cures for viral infections isn't easy. if it were, they'd have done it back in the early 1980's for HIV.

They're working on it for Hep C. I owned stock in Gilead Sciences until Friday, when the company released the news that the very promising Hep C drug they acquired when they bought out a company for 11 billion dollars not long ago had an unfortunate remission rate when discontinued. The stock gapped down about 15% and way under my stop and I lost $1200. The news sent a couple of competitors' stocks up about 8% and 20% respectively. Biotech/Drug company's stocks are subject to major swings based on news like that.

 

[Muse]

So its ok to allocate time for once common childhood diseases, while diseases like HIV run rampant?

I remember hearing about HIV sometime around 1985. 27 years later, and we still do not have a vaccine?

But during that time scientist developed vaccines for HPV and chicken pox?

How much further could we be in Hep C research if scientist would have taken the time, money and effort they put into HPV and Chicken Pox and put it into Hep C research?

We only have X amount of work hours in a year. Why divide that time between diseases that cause few health issues?

Dude you are a troll. The amount of money and human effort that has gone into attempting to develop effective vaccines against HIV is staggering.

Don't feed the trolls.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Developing cures for viral infections isn't easy. if it were, they'd have done it back in the early 1980's for HIV.

They're working on it for Hep C. I owned stock in Gilead Sciences until Friday, when the company released the news that the very promising Hep C drug they acquired when they bought out a company for 11 billion dollars not long ago had an unfortunate remission rate when discontinued. The stock gapped down about 15% and way under my stop and I lost $1200. The news sent a couple of competitors' stocks up about 8% and 20% respectively. Biotech/Drug company's stocks are subject to major swings based on news like that.

But, I thought that was drug companies' entire goal? This way you have to keep using.

I can't believe you guys still respond to TexasHiker. He's like a dupe Texas version of neckbeard.

 

[zanejohnson]

medical problems are scary.... things like infection due to suppressed immune system... scary as hell... people also dont realize, if your sick as a result of an immuno-deficiency... other stuff in your body's not right too... so medicine that would normally, work, on a healthy individual can cause all sorts of complications if the patient isn't strong enough, or other systems are damaged..

 

[Bignate603]

This is somewhat related to this topic as a whole. It looks like we're getting much closer to wiping out polio. A disease that used to kill or paralyze 500,000 a year is now down to only 649 recorded cases last year.

I don't care if Texashiker doesn't count this as a cure, polio is a terrible disease. I don't want to cure it. I want to wipe it off the planet

 

[busydude]

This is somewhat related to this topic as a whole. It looks like we're getting much closer to wiping out polio. A disease that used to kill or paralyze 500,000 a year is now down to only 649 recorded cases last year.

I don't care if Texashiker doesn't count this as a cure, polio is a terrible disease. I don't want to cure it. I want to wipe it off the planet

Last month.. India managed to go polio free for a year. :thumbsup:

It is a pretty nasty disease, and thanks to the efforts of NGOs and a lot of external funding.. they successfully pulled it off.

I personally know about 6-8 people who were disabled due to polio. It actually saddens me that there are people like Texashiker.. who can be so ungrateful to the services of scientific community.

 

[Muse]

But, I thought that was drug companies' entire goal? This way you have to keep using.

I can't believe you guys still respond to TexasHiker. He's like a dupe Texas version of neckbeard.

I think it was unexpected. Some drugs are very expensive to manufacture, you know.

I'll just ignore that cat in the future. I've done that here before. I don't hang out here all the time, just once in a while. I didn't know what a troll he was/is, only encountered him in one other thread. He was pretty much a dick there too, actually.

 

[esquared]

I also think that part of the hepatitis C research was in a slow reasearch mode was because the company that actually identified Hep C, Chiron, held/still holds multiple patents for the Hep C genome. Back then, (the 1990's), Chiron wanted money upfront, IIRC for other companies, who wanted to do research on Hep C, in the form of license fees.

Because of this, a lot of work hat could have been done on Hep C and possibly finding a prophylactic vaccine wasn't done.

There's an article here from 2004 that explains a lot of what went on regarding Chiron and their desire to get money from any company that wanted to work on HepC , including companies that just wanted to make diagnostic test kits.

http://hepcproject.typepad.com/hep_c_project/2004/06/chirons_hepatit.html

From this 2004 article it says that:

Under the new arrangement, companies could license Chiron's HCV patents without paying any up-front costs. Companies only have to make payments to Chiron when they reach certain milestones in their research, and then pay royalties on any sales for approved products.

Novartis aquired Chiron in 2006

 

[Nintendesert]

I swear, every time there's a thread about vaccines this nutjob is at the center of it.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I think it was unexpected. Some drugs are very expensive to manufacture, you know.

I'll just ignore that cat in the future. I've done that here before. I don't hang out here all the time, just once in a while. I didn't know what a troll he was/is, only encountered him in one other thread. He was pretty much a dick there too, actually.

Oh, sorry, the eye roll wasn't directed at your post, it was more about the people that argue that medical companies deliberately don't cure so they can make people have to keep buying their drugs.

 

[CZroe]

Didn't see this pointed out so I'm bumping a months-old thread to do so:

Back around 2001, 2002 and 2003 I was donating CPU time to a distributed computing project to find a cure for small pox. The program was through United Devices, which from what I understand is no longer around.

At the end of the small pox project, it was reported that users had contributed a total of something like 250,000 years worth of computing time. 250,000 years worth of computing time to look for a cure for a virus, that is a lot of time.

In comparison to human evolution, why cant computers figure out a cure for a virus with 250,000 years?

Fast forward 10 years to 2012, with new CPUs and the massive amount of distributed computing we have today, why can't we find a cure for viral infections?

Still based on the assumption that there *is* a cure for every viral infection.

...and the "years" of computing time doesn't really mean anything. A "year" is based on the project's computing power from some specific, arbitrary year. It's well-known that computational power has been multiplying over time.

The hours/years calculated are totaled for each simultaneous computer and he's comparing it to the years that ALL of mankind has existed. It is supposed to be comparable to man-hours, which is the work one particular man or woman could do with that much time. Obviously, the entire population since the dawn of man wasn't working on the vaccine, as he seems to imply with his comparison.