HEDLEY REES—The Office for Life Sciences were hugely impressed by the potential for gene therapies manufactured by OXB in the UK, especially when OXB signed a £100 million agreement with Novartis to supply the viral vector for Kymriah (which they were developing while I was there):
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P. GREANVILLE—More than a year into the pandemic and I still find it hard to locate easily digestible facts for what should be a straightforward question: How much is Big Pharma charging for an average vaccine shot? The leading TV journos have pretty much ignored the topic, as if it did not matter, supposedly (I presume that’s their convenient rationale) because the government, as if by magic, is making the jabs free to the public, anyhow. But, friends, without going libertarian, we all know that when the government pays, WE pay, ultimately, because the moneys laid out are our taxes, our money —well so they say. (Contrary to common assumption, the government, which does NOT operate like a household, need not balance the books nor rely on taxes alone for its expenditures).
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MICHELLE LLAMAS—If the ads are here to stay, improve them. What consumers really want to know are the costs, harms and trials as well as benefits. For example, simple tables with this information should be featured in print and TV ads. One study in the American Journal of Public Health found even consumers of lower education levels understood information presented in a quantitative table.
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WENDELL POTTER—It’s going to take, kind of, a sea change. Certainly, the current leadership in Washington is not going to make this happen. Bernie Sanders does have some solid and bold ideas. He advocates for moving us to an improved and expanded Medicare program in which all of us would be covered by Medicare, and allowing the Medicare program to actually negotiate with drug companies for lower prices. We should have that. The drug companies and the insurance industry lobbied against that and have successfully kept Medicare from being able to do that.
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“Homeopathy was created in an era when the most important principles of the chemistry…
