The $2m drug reveals medical research as a casino culture | Kenan Malik
Does Zolgensma, a revolutionary one-off treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, really need to cost so much?
How much is a life worth? $2.15m? That’s the staggering price of a drug produced by the pharmaceutical giant Novartis that has just come on the market. Zolgensma is a one-off gene therapy treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare degenerative disorder. Infants with the most severe form usually die within two years. For parents of babies born with SMA, any price is worth paying to save the child’s life. Novartis argues that spread across a lifetime, $2.15m is “cost-effective”.
It points out, too, the expense of developing such innovative drugs. In this case, though, Novartis did not develop Zolgensma but bought up, for £8.7bn, AveXis Inc, the company that did. The Wall Street Journal described the acquisition as a “bet”. The price of Zolgensma is the return necessary for that gamble to be successful.
作者暂无likerid, 赞赏暂由本网站代持，当作者有likerid后会全部转账给作者（我们会尽力而为）。Tips: Until now, everytime you want to store your article, we will help you store it in Filecoin network. In the future, you can store it in Filecoin network using your own filecoin.
Support author:
Author's Filecoin address:
Or you can use Likecoin to support author: