Two newborn twins need a one-dose treatment that would save their lives: Zolgensma, a $2.1M drug. Insurance (also the mother's employer) cut coverage of the drug the day after they were born.

_number8_@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 716 points –
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america is so fucking based man

in any proper country that company at least gets forced to pay by the government then ordered to shut down forever due to wanton cruelty. all the employees get generous severance except whoever made that call. depending upon your view of carceral punishment there are a few ways to go with that guy.

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Zolgemsma is a modified version of adeno associated virus and has to be grown under specific conditions. It costs $500k-$1m per production.. It's also a one time injection that functionally cures the person of the disease. There are a couple other options but for comparison, the other therapeutic is Spinraza which is an intermittent intrathecal infusion which is $805,000 for the first year of therapy and $380,000 per year thereafter for the rest of your life.

To be clear, I think we should bear the actual costs of research, development, and manufacture as a society and not profiteer off the sick, but there are some contributory reasons for the price.

If it costs 1 million to produce then anything above a 1.1 million cost is still pure greed.

yeah this video was helpful to understand the complexity in manufacturing AAVs, namely the raw size of the proteins manufacturers need to create & interweave.

👆 that little dot in the lower left corner is Aspirin (timestamp 12:00)

Wait if that's Aspirin then how do they get the big one inside of you? 😱

Those are molecule sizes, all these molecules are still very small

There's always more to the story isn't there? Else it wouldn't be called clickbait