Posted by Michael Wonder on 15 Aug 2020
Valuing innovative drugs based on their cost of manufacturing will prolong the COVID-19 pandemic
14 August 2020 - The value of innovative medicines has absolutely nothing to do with its cost of production. Yet, not only does this myth persist, it appears to be growing.
In the latest example, an article in the Journal of Virus Eradication claims that drugs being repurposed in the hopes they might be effective treatments for COVID-19, such as remdesivir and sofosbuvir, could be profitable at very low costs.
How do the authors come up with this conclusion? They claim that the costs of production range between $0.30 and $31.00 per treatment course (10–28 days). Therefore, even if the medicines are sold at cheap prices, these low prices would still be higher than their costs of production.
