Why are Cancer drugs so expensive. The manufacturing process must be similar to other drugs.?

and there are all the cancer research charities to help with funding.

Why are Cancer drugs so expensive. The manufacturing process must be similar to other drugs.?
Because drug companies can.





Once they own a patent for a drug (ie. brand it), they're the only ones who can manufacture it and can therefore name their own price, without the fear of a competitor under-cutting them.





This year, a team at Imperial College found a way to bypass the legal patent on some medicines by altering the molecular structure of the drugs, then retaining the rights to new discoveries and not selling them to big companies. They urged other universities and charities to do the same.
Reply:because it takes lots of money to develop these drugs. Research, clinical trials, FDA approval process etc. Hundreds of millions. It really has nothing to do with the actual manufacturing process. Thats the easy part. Most cancer drugs come from plants. Its the years of research and trials that cost money.





I agree with the guy above as well. Legal costs also raise prices. Make a drug that gives 99 people a productive life and the 100ths family will sue because he died, when he would have died anyway. So, everyone else suffers.
Reply:because there is a shortage of pills you only have so much supplies to make the pills its kinda like gas theres less of it so the price goes up and also its so expensive because if it gives them the cure they will pay anything to get it
Reply:Devlopment for one drug is very expensive. Not just cancer drugs.





I have read that only 1 in about 15 drugs that a drug company decides to develop actually makes it to market. So, drug companies have to recoup their losses on the successful drug that made it.





Even so, I believe some (most) drug prices are too high. I simply base this on the executive compesation and stock prices of the major pharmaceutical corporations.





Some drugs have been out for over 25 years now. You would like the price would be much lower.
Reply:It can take decades of research to discover develop a single drug or treatment. In those decades, salaries of researchers (which are not that large I might add), equipment, supplies, facilities charges must be paid which can come to hundreds of thousands of dollars for just one lab. Multiply this by the thousands of labs all over the US alone that are researching the many forms of cancer as well as the origins or genomics of cancer and we're talking astronomical amounts of money.





Sometimes the research leads to cancer treatments, sometimes it leads to treatments for other illnesses, sometimes it leads nowhere and a researcher has to go back to square one.





Then once a drug or treatment is discovered, it must go through animal testing and then human clinical trials which can take years as well, all the while money is being spent to keep the tests and trials going.





Then finally, if a drug, after the trial stage is deemed to be a successful treatment, patents are registered to prevent anyone else from making exactly the same drug and to make sure any profits go to the right person. (a but unethical considering many people in the background are doctors and have taken the hippocratic oath of do no harm. a patent, could very well be doing harm to patients when a drug is desperately needed). The drug must then be manufactured or synthesized and the costs of the manufacturing are determined by how the raw materials for the drugs can be produced, what and where the raw materials come from (sometimes rare plants, etc) and how long it takes to make it and how many manufacturers have the facilities needed to make it.





Sometimes a pharmaceutical company must come up with a whole new way of production and modify or build new manufacturing space to do this.





All of the costs of the successful or failed research that led to the drug, and sometimes expenses from research in other areas by the same institution or manufacturer can be factored into the cost of one successful treatment.





Now yes, there are charities that help with the funding, but those charities get money from donors (who often don't donate a lot of money because they don't have the funding or because there are other causes that they support) and many of those charities grant money to patient treatment and care, research, drug development, public awareness, etc. The money has to be spread out so thinly over all these outlets that no one area gets very large amounts from any one organization.





And many drugs are expensive, not just Cancer drugs, because all new drugs have to go through this. Sometimes the process is faster, sometimes not.
Reply:Cancer drugs are expensive because people (you %26amp; me!) expect them to work and to NOT HURT ANYBODY. If you discovered a pill that cured 99 out of 100 people with cancer (but killed the 100th person), I would think you were a genius, but America would think you were EVIL, and would sue you out of business because Mr.100 died!





We place too high a value on the lives of individuals (particularly lawyers!), and not high enough a value of the lives of entire populations. That's why people die of cancer...
Reply:The pharmaceutical companies do this to recover the cost of the years of research and testing which went on before the drug was brought to the market. They will then of course add to this so that they can make a profit.
Reply:People who have cancer will pay anything if they know its going to cure them, that is probably what the manufactures feed off.

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