On Nov 25, 10:09*pm, wrote:
On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:44:39 -0800 (PST), Frogwatch

wrote:
Maybe it cost that much to produce. *R&D aint cheap

That is the problem with all of the "orphan" diseases. If you spend
$50 million developing a drug that only goes to 10 thousand paying
patients, it is going to be expensive.

In R&D, 90% of what is tried fails for reasons you could not see
before you tried it. So, when something finally works, the first few
(or thousands) have to pay for all those failures. Even worse, the
successes are done with equipment that has not been optimized for
production but for research. Thus each dose is essentially hand made
and is paying for all those failures too. Being basically
experimental, the insurance for the drug company is bizzaro expensive
for this drug. Costs for developing and certifying any new drug is so
expensive as to make it a wonder any new ones are ever done.
Once it is known to work, certain other nations laws allow them to
copy the drug while paying very little to the developer and nations
like China copy and pay nothing. Thus you, American customer pay for
all th development costs while allowing everybody else to essentially
get it for nothing