Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Hep C: When doctors do the…, in reply to Don Christie,
Wow, an example of where zone locking actually kills people. Also, “high quality” trade agreements will make this sort of work around illegal.
Indeed. Gilead priced to the market all around the world. Obviously Pharmac, as the direct negotiator, can't do the workaround, but – let's say, in a case where someone's on a sickness benefit – you'd think MSD could. $1500 to get someone fit for work again seems like a bargain.
And the fact that Professor Gane, who ran the damn trials, feels free to refer people to parallel-imported Gilead drugs suggests the latitude is fairly wide.
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Hard News: Hep C: When doctors do the…, in reply to James Freeman,
In other words a cure has been invented but we have made next to no impact on the disease.
I think, as Ed Gane constantly points out, that there's eminent potential to eliminate Hep C within countries like Australia and New Zealand. Countries with rampant new infection rates are gonna be much harder.
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Hard News: Hep C: When doctors do the…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But for every drug that is successful there are many that fail completely and somehow these companies have to cover that cost.
The real problem, and one that isn’t being fixed, is the shareholder push to maximise profit. If at any point a company doesn’t do that they get sued by the shareholders.
James' comment above nails it in a way I couldn't – there was a race to get DAAs to market and Gilead's spend was more about buying a company for its IP than any development risk.
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Hard News: Public Address and PressPatron, in reply to Hugh Wilson,
there probably an optimism bias whereby readers think the site’s journalistic efforts are showered in commercial returns when, I suspect, the opposite is more the case.
Yeah – over the years some people have always thought I've been coining it from display advertising and I have to explain that the reality is very much otherwise.
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Hard News: Hep C: When doctors do the…, in reply to Hazel Heal,
Thank you Russel, well told. At the start though, regarding Gilead's attempting to recoup it's development costs, don't worry about that- they achieved that in about the first month of sales.
Amended accordingly :-)
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Hard News: Drugs, testing and workplaces, in reply to Farmer Green,
The OSH laws in relation to drug use identify “safety – sensitive ” workplaces as having a special status.
It is far from inconceivable that , in the event of a farm accident, a farmer could be held liable for having endangered other workers by employing someone known to have used drugs in the past.Nowhere in any advice that I can find is blanket banning suggested as a reasonable move. Employment NZ's drug and alcohol advice certainly goes nowhere near the idea. Ditto for Safer Farms.
And employer with reason to believe there's a safety problem can generally require both pre-employment or employee drug tests, as part of a drug and alcohol policy.
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Benedict Collins with the actual numbers on Checkpoint yesterday.
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Hard News: Drugs, testing and workplaces, in reply to Katharine Moody,
But of course he will have reached a far smaller audience than this idiot.
Oh, good grief.
Hosking declares MSD’s drug-testing + sanctions regime “exposed just how bad the [drug] problem was”.
NO, IT DIDN’T. THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT YOU MORON.
(Sorry, that was my text version of shouting at the TV.)
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From NBR (paywalled):
Employers and Manufactures Association chief executive Kim Campbell says the problem is bigger than Mr English might be letting on.
“What he hasn’t said, which is a bigger problem, is people aren’t presenting themselves for work for the jobs in the first place because they are whacked [drugged up].”
He says this is evident by simply looking at New Zealand’s economic data.
“We have a headline GDP growth of well over 3%, inflation closer to 1% and an unemployment rate of 5.2%.
“Normally, with this kind of strong economic data, the unemployment rate would be closer to 3%.”
He says the rest are the “unemployable.”
“People like me in businesses are calling [Mr English] and saying either we’re not getting Kiwis applying, or when we do they don’t pass the drug test – so many of them.”
Right. You've been regaling the Prime Minister with your made-up facts about how all those young people are on drugs and that's why unemployment isn't lower because it stands to reason really when you think about it doesn't it because it's "evident".
FUCKSAKE.
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Hard News: Drugs, testing and workplaces, in reply to Sacha,
The same goes for the dairy industry. A mid-Canterbury dairy farmer who didn’t want to be named told Newshub he employed and housed four immigrant workers, and has just employed another one because the only two Kiwis who applied had drug records.
The fuck? So they're to be banned from ever working again?
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