Alexandre Yersin, who identified the bacteria which causes Black Plague, and who developed the first effective treatment for it, said he could never practice medicine because he could not bring himself to say to someone, "Your money or your life."
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| Yersin |
How far we have fallen.
When asked what this cure for blindness will cost, the CEO says $1 million dollars per patient--half a million per eye. When asked where that price came from, he did not try to justify it by the cost of production or by the cost of the research. He probably avoided alluding to the cost of research, to the salaries of the faculty who identified the gene, because, of course, those faculty of the University of Pennsylvania likely got significant taxpayer support in their training, in their laboratories.
Instead, the CEO said they looked at court awards in cases of blindness. A million dollars seems to be the going price for vision.
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| Charged $700 for a single tablet; a piker by comparison |
We have come to this in the United States of America.
Alexandre Yersin, it might be noted was Swiss, trained by Pasteur in Paris--that's in France, where they have a national health system.. Neither ever became a millionaire.
Make America Great Again!
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteThere's a special wing in hell for the vermin that make their money off the anguish and illness of others. For a moment I thought perhaps the CEO you mentioned could have been referring to the cost per patient of producing the blindness remedy, but then realized even if that was the scenario, that price was most likely the sum after he and others were paid Midas salaries. One would think the sheer joy garnered from restoring a child's sight would be reward enough. Alas no. The researchers and administration shouldn't be working for nothing-they need to put food on their table too-but it's apparently all the other things they want to be able to put on there that creates the problem.
A decent CEO would spend their days locating children throughout the world that the company could cure, wouldn't you think? They could then go home at night and gratefully and proudly say to their family "We cure blindness" as opposed to "We get rich curing blindness"...different ring indeed. This greed begets more greed since the children of these money grubbers often grow up with the same mentality. What's especially disturbing about this story is the idea that some of the research may have been the result of public funds. There should be some way we could curb this abuse. One unfortunately doesn't see a lot of Andre Yersins in the corporate landscape these days-a man who was not only brilliant but honest and heroic as well..Our collective loss...
Maud
Ms. Maud,
ReplyDeleteYersin reminds us that the tension between making money and practicing medicine has been out there for generations. And this story is just the tip of the iceberg.
As a dinosaur, I can remember when medicine really was considered a calling even among the most cynical medical students, well mostly.